To Avoid War, Know Your Enemy

Universalist Ideologies Don't Exist

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To Avoid War, Know Your Enemy

I used to think that world peace was possible.

I believed humans could live in some Star Trek-style universe where humanity was unified and aligned in some grand mission to end our insurmountable problems together.

This was not an isolated naivety. Growing up, I saw marches for world peace, politicians discussing the hopeful goal of world peace, and musicians playing massive concerts for world peace. This common image convinced me that the concept is a possibility — albeit, an improbable one.

It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I had a realization about the nature of conflict and war. There is a biology to violence.

Our aversion to war has left us unable to understand its necessity and biological foundation. And without an understanding, we paradoxically are more likely to pull ourselves into unnecessary conflict on both a global and individual scale. Conflict is in our nature and if you don't study it, it will meet you regardless.

A future without war is as naive to imagine as a future without love or grief. As long as different, cultures, religions, ethnic groups, political ideologies, and systems of value exist, conflict will always exist. If it can exist in the workplace or the household, it can, and will exist at the level of the nation-state.

This isn’t a defense of war — this reflection stems from a desire to understand the function of war. How does it shape and mold societies?

Most functioning societies are the byproduct of conflict and immeasurable human suffering and violence. War simply is.

And it serves a purpose we’d be stupid not to recognize.

Total War

During an expedition to the Congo, Jane Goodall saw a previously unknown aspect of chimpanzee culture that shocked her. Chimps engage in warfare. They didn’t just seek out the other males in neighboring bands, they sought out children, torturing and cannibalizing them.

This was the first time this behavior had been seen in chimpanzees, and it shed light on an inconvenient and terrifying truth about our predisposition to seemingly pointless violence.

Based on Goodall’s observations, the seeking and cannibalizing of juvenile chimps by raiding bands can be interpreted as a type of total war. A war that punishes the non-combatants. The innocents.

When General William Tecumseh Sherman marched through the Confederate States during the closing chapters of the American Civil War; burning fields of crops, looting, and leveling towns in his wake, he did so as a rational human. Or so we think.

He wrote:

We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience.

A lasting Union Victory, as it has been argued, depended on the complete and total psychological breaking of the Confederacy. This entailed public atonement through violence. The Confederate people were forced to acknowledge, through violence and war, that their moral justification and support of the breakaway Republic had consequences. It was a vindictive punishment for the enemy people. A ruthless strike at the heart of the South’s national identity after years of political infighting and pent-up rage. Regardless of what you think about Sherman (I am unsure at best about his status as a “great” man of American history) his actions during his march to the sea, underlay a punishing psychological question about war. When you kick your enemy when he’s already down; when you convict him on his deathbed, does it serve a purpose?

The German people suffered the same terrible fate from Allied bombing raids during World War II. During the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome, the Carthaginian empire was burned to ash and the people were either enslaved or incorporated totally under Roman law and custom.

Total war is a reminder to nations, empires, and the people that live in them, that no culture or state is guaranteed its permanent existence. To imagine that such a state of war will somehow cease to exist, that somehow human nature or our capacity for violence is fundamentally different from what it has been for a thousand years prior, begets an ignorant and infantile public.

It isn’t a matter of if a large-scale global conflict but when.

Now if possible, attempt to take a view from above with what I am about to say next. If one can detach themselves from the visceral horror of combat and mass suffering, war serves as an ultimate tool for political change. It is a violent teacher, but a teacher nonetheless. Had we not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would we have been more likely to fire a dozen, ten times more powerful nuclear warheads, at the height of the Cold War? Had the American Revolutionary War never occurred, would the positive technological or economic changes that have benefitted the entire world occurred at a later time, if at all?

Counterfactual arguments are essential for understanding what exists on the other side of horror. They are also necessary for preventing conflict.

Thucydides, an Ancient Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War spoke about war in a way that modern people would call “Darwinian”.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

-Thucydides

A weak society is never guaranteed its existence. A powerful society treads a fine line between exposing the weakness in its own social, military, or political flanks from overextension. If a nation desires long-term survival, it must prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It must know its enemies and share a political and national identity that prevents them from an internal collapse.

This historical narrative played out in a thousand-year drama during the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

The Roman victory against Carthage during the Punic Wars was crucial for establishing long-term peace and stability within the burgeoning Empire. By defeating Carthage, Rome eliminated a formidable rival, gaining unchallenged dominance in the Mediterranean and control over vital trade routes and resources. This victory not only consolidated Roman power, deterring potential rebellions and external threats but also fostered internal unity and strengthened Roman identity. The absorption of Carthaginian territories furthered the spread of Roman culture and political systems, laying the groundwork for future expansion. This triumph over Carthage was instrumental in creating the foundation for the Pax Romana, a period marked by relative peace, economic prosperity, and cultural cohesion across the Empire.

As Rome continued to expand, the militaristic and social cohesion it had forged in its infancy began to be strained. The decline of the Roman Empire was accelerated by gradual military changes it had necessarily relied on to hold together its vast empire. An over-reliance on ambivalent foreign mercenaries, difficulties in recruiting sufficient Roman soldiers, and a trend toward the decentralization of military power shifted the balance of power from the Roman state to its adversaries. This was compounded by the economic strain of funding a vast army, leading to a decrease in soldier morale and loyalty, and a “barbarization” of the military as it increasingly incorporated non-Roman elements, diluting the traditional Roman identity and cohesion. The empire's shift from an offensive to a defensive military posture, combined with a failure to adapt to new tactics and technologies employed by adversaries, left it vulnerable, and eventually, made it susceptible to the same problems that enemies such as Carthage had faced during the wars of the early empire.

The Friend and Enemy Distinction

I have found the work of Carl Schmitt most useful in understanding both the necessity of war and strategies for its prevention. Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction, a central element in his political theory, posits that the essence of the political is identifying 'friends' (those within one's group) and 'enemies' (those who are potentially hostile and outside the group).

This existential distinction, which transcends morality and economics, is fundamental to political identity and the nature of sovereignty, as it involves the readiness for conflict. Fundamental to this concept, is the discrediting of liberal democratic theories that overlook inherent political antagonisms, arguing instead that they lead to a depoliticized understanding of reality.

Those who have values can easily find those whose values are antithetical. In the course of history, these differences inevitably lead to conflict. When applying the friend-enemy distinction to our own political or moral leanings, we aren’t seeking conflict, but rather building a foundation of preventative awareness. What does this mean?

Most importantly, it means acknowledging that there are no universalist ideologies. Liberal (from the Enlightenment) attempts to eradicate the political (and thereby the distinction between friend and enemy) through universalist ideologies, leading towards more insidious forms of warfare, including total war, rather than a mutually beneficial segmentation and natural segregation. We need only look at the culture clash between Europeans and recent migrants from the Middle East and Africa to understand that, in Joan Didion’s words, “the center cannot hold” forever. Violence is inevitable; ongoing, and it will not be appeased by the universalist ideologies espoused by Europe’s Center-Left political leadership.

Like the Chimps that Goodall studied in the African jungle, there is an inherent political nature of human existence that drives us towards conflict. This is a desire for power and control over our enemies. Despite its negative connotations, it’s why you’re here. We’ve graduated towards a form of politicking, but some conflicts cannot be deterred in the halls of the United Nations.

To avoid war, we must understand the shadow of our nature. And we must be willing as individuals, to escape the possibility of conflict through an honest appraisal of the enemies we share our internal and external space with. The individual who seeks power without a desire to use it on his enemies will be prepared to respond against power when weaponized against him.

As always, thanks for reading

-Joe