Sermon for 7 November 2004, 1st Unitarian Church of Alton,, Illinois

ON WAR AND POLITICS
Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction
A. We have just had an election in which one important issue was war, represented both by the present military action against Iraq and the trumpeted "war against terrorism."
B. What we may not be thinking much about is the fact that this election served in effect as a substitute for a war within our country. Because of our democratic political system the losers in this election can hope for a change to different policies in the not-too-distant future, something that would not be the case if our leaders had been determined by an actual war between the opposing political parties. In that case the leaders of the winning party would be in power until physically removed. We should be grateful for this wonderful democratic political system which our ancestors have bequeathed to us.
C. Today I want to address the issue of the relation between war and politics in a general way. Why do we have wars? Have we humans ever devised an alternative way of resolving the kinds of conflicts which lead to war? If we have already devised an alternative way for dealing with conflicts between groups struggling for political power, why don't we make greater use of this alternative? Why do we still have wars if we already know how to make them unnecessary?
D. As many of you know, for 25 years I taught a course on the problem of war at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and wrote a textbook for that course titled Confronting War, the 4th edition of which was published in 2001. Some of the ideas I will be sharing with you this morning can also be found in that book.

II. War and politics cannot be separated, because the aim of warfare is to gain political power over some territory.
A. Why are there wars? Because in many situations, internationally and also within some countries, that is the way leaders gain political power for themselves and their followers.
B. What do I mean by political power? Political power means control of the government, that is, control of the military forces (which apply physical force to overcome external resistance) and the police forces (which apply physical force to overcome internal resistance) as well as control of the rule-making for the whole society. The government, whether it is a single dictator or a small elite group of leaders or a parliament composed of elected representatives, is the agency that determines what policies will be followed by the society as a whole.
C. Individuals in the society may like or dislike the policies and the laws enacted to implement them, but it is the government that determines those policies and those laws. It is also the government that has the authority to enforce the laws it has enacted.
D. We saw both in Afghanistan and in Iraq what happens when there is no government to make and enforce laws. Without government we have chaos. Some Iraqis are reported to be saying that they prefer the tyranny of Saddam Hussein to the present anarchy.

III. The development of government shows how political power grew out of military power.
A. For thousands of years of human history, the leaders who ruled the groups were the warriors, often assisted by priests or religious leaders who supported them. Physical strength, skill in combat, and the capacity to attract followers was required to gain controlling power. Sometimes a single warrior would be able to control the whole larger group, but usually one person would not be likely to dominate a larger group without help from some other loyal supporters. Nevertheless physical prowess was the key to controlling power, both within the group itself and in relation to resisting and dominating other groups.

B. In this kind of situation, similar to what we find in other herd animals, physical battles occur from time to time as the way to determine who will be in charge, to determine which individual is to gain the position of alpha male within the group. Those alpha males might also sometimes lead their group into physical battles against other groups.
C. As long as there was open territory to which less militarily successful groups could go, any wars between groups were of rather short duration. The "losers" would simply move on to do their hunting and gathering in some other less desirable territory. That is how Eskimos and other groups ended up living in areas that other groups felt not worth fighting for.
D. But after the agricultural revolution (which began about twelve thousand years ago), groups became more relutant to abandon their crops and permananent residences, so wars became more intense.
E. The role of government in winning wars became more important. Better organized, larger groups with better weaponry and better training in how to fight wars would defeat other smaller groups not so well organized or equipped or trained. The need to succeed in warfare against other groups also meant that dissent within the group had to be eliminated.
F. This militaristic competition between larger and larger states developed into our present international system of sovereign countries where it seems that the most important thing for any large nation to have is its capacity to fight and win wars against other nations.
G. World Wars I and II showed that countries need to have not only their own military might but also strong allies who will fight with them. In the 1930's and early 1940's Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were both based almost exclusively on the need to be able to gain military victory over other countries. If the Germans had succeeded in creating nuclear weapons before being defeated in World War II, our present world would be very different.
H. The Communists in Russia, Korea, Vietnam, and China have continued to emphasize the role of the military and physical coercion in gaining and retaining political power. Mao Zedong said, "Political power flows out of the barrel of a gun."
I. Doesn't this reliance on military and physical coercion mean that we will always have wars and that the only way to have security is to have a more effective military force than any other country or group of countries? Is there any other sensible policy for any country to follow but "Peace through Strength"?
J. The United Nations was created to promote the idea of collective security, the notion that if any country were attacked militarily it should be assisted by all the other members of the U.N. But the U.N.'s record is such that few countries are ready to put much trust in it.
K. So why do we have wars and arms races? Because within some countries and in some international contexts, there doesn't seem to be any trustworthy way of deciding intense, fundamental conflicts between organized groups aiming to advance opposing policies. Yet as humans develop ever more devastating weapons to use against each other, we seem to be heading for a situation where even the "winners" of a war will be "losers." It is also evident that the natural environment suffers from the destructive activities carried out in war. Eventually our planet may become unable to sustain human life.

IV. An important reason why we have not made more progress in dealing with the problem of war (that is, of abolishing war) is that we have not yet learned to view war as a social sickness that needs to be eliminated from our Earth.
A. After a war is occurring, typically the focus is on how to win that particular war, not how to eliminate all future wars of any kind.
B. Using a medical analogy, we can see that if you don't even recognize that you have a sickness (say diabetes or glaucoma or a high blood pressure), you're not likely to do anything to deal with that problem. Too many of us don't even see that humanity has a war problem.

C. Extending this analogy further, suppose that you do sense that there is a medical problem of some kind but focus your attention only on the effects, not the probable causes. If there is some kind of epidemic, some observers will focus on the effects such as how many people are dying or what kind of suffering they undergo, but such information is not going to help deal with the problem until you focus on the causes.
D. In studying any particular war (like the current war in Iraq), the attention is usually on the effects. Who is winning? How many deaths and casualties are there? How much is being destroyed? How successful are different kinds of weapons being used to destroy the enemy? Who is gaining control of what territory? What kinds of problems will the winners need to deal with? Such typical concerns about the effects of a particular war are not going to help us to abolish the ongoing sickness of war.
E. Or some might focus on the effects of war in an effort to show how grave the problem of war is. Writers, artists, film-makers, journalists, reporters, and so on often direct public attention to the disastrous effects of war, to how horrible war is, but such activity only accentuates the fact that there is a problem needing attention. It does not help to deal with the problem. Such attention-grabbing activity may in fact detract from solving the problem just because attention is being directed to the effects of war rather than the causes and to a particular war rather than to the problem of war in general.

V. Is there some better way of dealing with whatever kind of ongoing problem it is that war has been solving for us? (War must have some utility, or it would not have been with us for so long.)
A. In a 1940 article titled "War Is Only an Invention--Not a Biological Necessity" famous anthropologist Margaret Mead argued that warfare is a "social invention" which could be displaced by a new social invention that deals more adequately with the same problem, the problem of resolving conflict between social groups with opposing aims.
1. To illustrate her general point, Mead notes how trial by ordeal and trial by combat have been replaced by trial by jury, a much better way of determining guilt or innocence.
2. She then notes that a poor social invention will usually be replaced by a better one if two conditions are met: (1) the defects of the old institution must be generally recognized, and (2) a better invention must be created to deal with the relevant problem.
3. It seems that more and more people are realizing that the development of ever more deadly weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, means the old institution of war must go. The deficiency of war as an institution is evident to anyone who examines it.

VI. It seems to me that Mead makes themistake of not extending her argument to the second condition. She fails to note that humans have in fact already worked out a better invention to deal with this problem of how to decide who gets the power to rule the society. This new invention is representative democracy, where the people decide by voting who will be in charge of the government. Political democracy is the new institution to replace warfare.
A. The new idea of allowing many citizens to make policy decisions jointly rather than allowing one strong man to decide everything seems to have got started in Athens about 450 BCE and spread to some other Greek city-states, but it was wiped out by the Roman Empire about 100 BCE. The idea of democracy was tried again by some of the city-states of Italy at the end of the Middle Ages, but did not become more widespread in the modern world until after 18th-century developments in the United States, Poland, and France.
B. That political democracy with leadership elected by the citizens of the community is an alternative to war within the state becomes obvious if one examines the following definitions.
1. War can be defined as "large-scale violent conflict between organized groups which are or aim to become governments over some territory."

2. Politics within a democratic state can be defined as "large-scale non-violent conflict between organized groups which are or aim to become governments over some territory."
C. The connection between war and politics is also manifested by the way that war breaks out when the democratic political process breaks down, as occurred at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War in 1861 after Abraham Lincoln had been elected President. The Southern states refused to accept the results of the 1860 election and decided to use to force instead. Rejecting the democratical political process meant resorting to war.

VII. So why is there not a greater readiness to accept the democratic political process as an alternative to war, both within countries and at the international level between countries?
A. In non-democratic countries those who presently have political power want to maintain their present control rather than instituting a democratic political system that might allow others to be selected as leaders by a vote of the citizenry, even if such a change would bring about peace, justice, and prosperity, and an end to reliance on military power and coercion.
B. Similarly at the global level those countries like the United States which presently have overwhelming power are not ready to permit policy-making by the whole world community, even if such a change could bring about a system of global governance where policies would be made on the basis of voting and appeal to argumentation, even if such a change would bring peace, justice, and prosperity, and an end to reliance on military power and coercion.
C. In other words, those who presently have coercive power, whether within nations or at the global level, are not yet ready to lead the transition from a world ruled by physical force and coercion to a world governed by the collective will of the people who are ruled.
D. One small ray of hope is that there is a growing effort to get the democratic countries at the U.N. to work together to support democratic values in that organization.

VIII. Of course, we need to recognize both within countries (including our own) and at the level of a global parliament, a successful functioning democracy requires much more than just rule by a majority of those voting.
A. In order for voting to be a good way of setting public policy, those who vote must be informed not only about the particular issues being decided in the election but also about the world in general. They must be educated about history and geography and philosophy and ideology and social science and natural science.
B. There must be freedom of speech, freedom of association with others, and open debate so that all aspects of the issues are brought forward for consideration.
C. There must be limits on what the majority can impose on the minority. Individual rights must be protected against a "tyranny of the majority."
D. There must be agreed-upon rules about when and how the votes are to be cast and how they are to be counted.

IX. Our own national government seems to be eager to impose a democratic political system on other countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, but is questionable whether we have a right to do this in a unilateral fashion. We are ready to be champions of majority rule and the rule of law for certain nation-states, but we are hypocritical when it comes to following these principles at the global level. If this country really wants to spread democracy and the rule of law, we need to follow and promote those values at the global level too.