What Causes War?

War is nasty and evil; it causes misery and suffering. War is also unavoidable. Given that human beings are what they are, conflict on this planet is inevitable; it is the distinctive goal of western civilization to make sure that wars are infrequent and short, and to try to minimize human suffering and death.

But what causes war? For every war fought, history books will give a complex narrative of political intrigue. But we can simplify this to say most, or perhaps all, wars are caused by a desire for land, money, and power. Political or patriotic ideologies, or religions, are sometimes wrongly blamed for starting wars.

By way of example, let us consider the wars of the twentieth century: WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam - to which we might also add the Spanish Civil War, Operation Desert Storm, and other lesser conflicts. The driving forces behind these wars was certainly not a domestic ideological struggle between two political parties inside one of the belligerents, nor was it religious belief.

In many cases, wars which are labeled as "religious" are in fact not at all religious. Three examples suffice to make this point: The Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1848) is often described as a religious conflict, but it saw the Roman Catholic French in an alliance with the Lutheran Swedes: the war was really about whether power in Europe would be centralized in an empire under the Habsburg dynasty, or whether power would be located with regional kingdoms. The so-called 'French Wars of Religion' (1562 to 1598) were not about religion, but about who should rule France, in which Henry I of Guise fought against the Bourbon Henry III; both were Roman Catholic. In the conflicts between northern Ireland and southern Ireland, which are often called religious, the real question is and always has been about role of the English: starting in 1169, Henry II made claims of sovereignty over parts of Ireland, and ever since, there has been fighting; but the English Reformation happened in 1532, so we see that both sides were Roman Catholic.

We see, then, that most wars are about land, money, and power. Even when history books label a conflict as a "religious" war, it actually is not a religious war, as our three examples above illustrate.

Soviet Agriculture

The world is still learning from vast experiment carried out between 1917 and 1990: the Soviet Union was a 73-year-long attempt to create some version of a Marxist or Communist state. In terms of vocabulary, the labels varied from Socialist and Communist to Leninist and Stalinist, with a few other words used or coined along way, like 'Trotsky-ite'.

In any case, as we sort through the debris that was Soviet Communism, we can learn from this long string of attempts to form a socialist utopia. The realm of agriculture is a good example. Author Michael Savage writes that

Prior to Stalin's tinkering with the system, the farms in the Soviet Union were individually owned and operated by small family farmers, much as you might have in parts of this country today. These farmers, known as kulaks or individual landowners, were the backbone of the agricultural industry for the Soviets, having worked the soil for generations. Before Stalin intervened, the kulaks were quite productive and the people were eating fairly well.

It is worth noting that the kulaks were left in place for some years after the Communist-Socialist takeover in 1917. Stalin didn't come into power until after Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, died in 1924. Why did Stalin want to re-organize the agricultural system, if it had been working fairly well for the first few years after the revolution?

Because he had embraced Marx and Lenin's view that evil capitalists were the antithesis of socialism. For socialism to work, the capitalists had to be weeded out. And, as Marx had taught, "The theory of Communism may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property." Since the farmers were landowners who sometimes employed a handful of others, that made them a threat to communism and, as such, Stalin said they had to go.

The mere fact that they owned land made these farmers 'enemies of the state' and they paid dearly for that: they were killed by the millions.

Stalin was of the opinion that the government, with the help of a centralized game plan, could run the farms better than the farmers. He figured he'd eliminate the profit motive of these greedy individual farmers and, by nationalizing the agricultural business, make it more efficient, increase productivity, and expand farmland output.

Farming takes two things: experience and hard work. There are a great many decisions and judgments to be made by a farmer: when to plant, when to harvest, which type of fertilizer to use, which type of grain is best suited for a particular field, etc.; such decisions require experience. Farming is also brutally physically demanding: strong farmers are exhausted at the end of a day's work. Guys sitting behind a desk in a government office have little notion of how to run a farm.

Let's not dwell on the fact that Stalin never planted a turnip and had no idea what was involved in running a farm. For whatever reason, Stalin placed his faith in the brilliant government bureaucrats in Moscow, believing they could do a better job than the kulaks who actually had dirt under their fingernails. Almost overnight, Stalin's regime swung into action, enforcing the collectivization of agriculture.

Imagine a swarm of government agents showing up at a farm, summarily removing the family which had operated and owned that farm for generations, and installing an official with several hired hands to run the farm - people who had never farmed before, following a set of instructions written by someone who had also never farmed before. It was a recipe for disaster.

In the early 1930's, Stalin proceeded to steal the land from the people - ordinary men and women like you and me - arresting those who refused to go along with the program. Millions of kulaks were exiled to distant corners of Russia. Many landed in Stalin's Gulag labor camps, and more than twenty thousand who resisted were executed. Yes, there was widespread resistance because, in simple terms, as musician Frank Zappa once quipped, "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." What was the fruit of Stalin's takeover of the farming industry?

As the resistance to Stalin grew stronger, he ordered that more and more farmers be executed or shipped off to a labor camp. When other farmers saw what was happening, they, too, resisted. To stop the cycle, Stalin knew that something massive would be needed. Michael Savage continues: "Russia experienced widespread famine of biblical proportions." But it was worse than that - these were deliberate famines, manufactured food shortages. Stalin saw that if he could starve several million of his enemies to death, he could blame the deaths on the few farmers who remained. A brilliantly evil plot: create a famine to starve half of your enemies to death, and then blame it on the remaining half, so that you have an excuse to execute or imprison them.

An estimated ten million Russians died from starvation because Stalin's promise of government efficiency and increased output turned out to be nothing more than fiction, a product of Stalin's fertile yet warped thinking. In fact, "the people who grew the grain were dying at a rate of 25,000 a day."

As late as the 1970's, people from Moscow would drive out to the countryside to see the 'ghost towns' - farming villages in which everyone had died, and the buildings had simply been left. These were eerie reminders of Stalin's habit of starving his own people - the houses still had clothing and personal possessions in them, left as they were the day the last person in the village died. At the time, there were too few remaining people to bother packing them up.

Prior to 1917, Russia had always been a significant exporter of grain. In fact, Russia was the "most important grain exporting country" in the world. After Stalin's communist takeover and the practice of a state-controlled agricultural industry, Russia's grain export business ground to a halt. In fact, in order to meet its own needs, years later Russia was forced to import upwards of six million tons of grain annually. This embarrassing situation continued until 1994 when Russian farmers were finally able to begin modest exports of grain.

The socialist government managed to ruin the world's most successful grain-growing nation.

This loss of productivity and massive, unnecessary loss of life occurred because Stalin put socialism into practice, bringing it out of the theoretical realm in ways that neither Lenin nor Marx himself had ever tried on such a large scale. What's more, this dictator and disciple of Marxism-Leninism became one of the worst mass murderers in history.

The lesson is clear: any large-scale intervention by government into the lives of ordinary humans will lead to misery, loss of freedom, and loss of life.

Why Communism Failed

Communism and socialism were powerful influences in various parts of the world in the second half of the twentieth century. In the first half of the century, only Russia fell prey to these ideologies. But as the decades rolled by, China and other parts of Asia fell under their spell, as did regions in Africa; Central American and South America also were victims of various socialist schemes.

The vision presented by socialism and communism was indeed enticing. As William Duiker writes, it can seem "fair" to wish for the goals which Marx, Mao, Lenin, Castro, and Stalin presented:

According to Marxist doctrine, government control of industry and the elimination of private property were supposed to lead to a classless society.

Historians have noted that trains in the Soviet Union still had tickets for "first class" and "second class" - so much for a classless society! In more significant ways, there was a privileged class in not only the Soviet Union, but also in Marxist dictatorships from Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua to Pol Pot's Cambodia. Duiker notes that "the classless society was never achieved" in any socialist or communist state.

Instead, a new class system appeared. An aristocracy composed of party members and scientists, technocrats, and athletes who would bring fame to Marxist dictatorships:

Another aspect of the social structure in the Communist world: the emergence of a new privileged class, made up of members of the Communist Party, state officials, high-ranking officers in the military and secret police, and a few special professional groups. The new elite not only possessed political power but also received special privileges, including the right to purchase high-quality goods in special stores (in Czechoslovakia, the elite could obtain organically grown produce not available to anyone else), paid vacations at special resorts, access to good housing and superior medical services, and advantages in education and jobs for their children.

Not only was there a strict class structure in these societies, but gender roles were also imposed (instead of voluntarily chosen). Women in Marxist states were not living in a feminist paradise:

Ideals of equality did not include women. Men dominated the leadership positions of the Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

By contrast, in Western Europe, we see Margaret Thatcher elected as the most powerful woman in the world in the 1980's. In the Soviet Union, women were consigned to drudgery and exploited:

In the Soviet Union, women comprised 51 percent of the labor force in 1980; by the mid-1980's, they constituted 50 percent of the engineers, 80 percent of the doctors, and 75 percent of the teachers and teachers' aides.

Not only were women relegated to working, but at lower pay:

Many of these were low-paying jobs; most female doctors, for example, worked in primary care and were paid less than skilled machinists. The chief administrators in hospitals and schools were still men.

Women in the Soviet Union got the worst of both worlds: they faced the daily grind as workers, and at a lower wage than those men who were consigned to the same daily grind:

Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Bolshevik Revolution, then, the Marxist dream of an advanced, egalitarian society was as far away as ever.

Ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union, and in Eastern Europe, were resigned to being "lower class" in a "classless society" - and the women were not only forced to enter the labor pool, but at a lower wage than those men who were also dismissed to a life of work.

Difficult Times in Chile

The South American country of Chile was ruled by General Pinochet from September 1973 until 1989. Pinochet had come to power in a coup, killing his predecessor Salvador Allende, who had come to power in 1970. Depending on one's politics, there is a temptation to see one of these two men as "the good guy" and the other one as the bad guy. But in reality, the situation is more complicated, and more bleak.

General Pinochet was the 58th commander-in-chief of the Chilean army. (Unlike the United States, the commander-in-chief is not the same as the president, although an individual can inhabit both offices at once.) For there to have been 58 men in this office in Chile's history, from 1813 until 1973, illustrates a very high turnover rate in this office. By comparison, from 1942 to 2011, the United States has had 18 Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not only is the tenure in office shorter for the Chilean military commanders, but many of them ended their tenures by being assassinated by rival officers.

The intrinsic instability of Chile's system is also seen in the presidency, which - while not quite as unstable as the commander-in-chief's office, has had periods of time in which average tenure in office was rather short.

The individual personalities of Pinochet and Allende are symptoms of an inherent problem in Chile. Neither of them was able to govern with consistent success: according to historian William Duiker, Allende

began to move toward socialism by nationalizing the largest domestic and foreign-owned corporations. Nationalization of the copper industry - essentially without compensation for the owners - caused

distrust among both the Chilean citizens and foreign powers. Allende's radical moves were designed to address Chile's chronic economic problems of inflation, debt, and unemployment. Allende's actions didn't do much to fix the problem, and generated enough ill-will for Pinochet to topple him.

Pinochet, for his part, tried a different economic strategy: he moved to

restore many nationalized industries and landed estates to their original owners.

This move did create a modest upswing in the economy, but was implemented with a heavy-handedness that cost Pinochet some of his popular support:

Although Pinochet's regime liberalized the economy, its flagrant abuse of human rights led to growing unrest against the government.

Ultimately, neither Allende nor Pinochet can be seen as successful. Chile lurched from dogmatic socialism under Allende to Pinochet's "crony capitalism" that lacked a truly free market. The underlying social and cultural factors are inherited traditions and views of leadership, common in Spanish-speaking cultures, that do not provide a welcoming environment for either democracy or free-market creativity. The free exchange of opinions, and the inventive use of capital to create opportunities for wealth, are ignored in favor of institutional power and cronyism.

These same problems face many countries in both South America and Central America; these are, in part, inherited echoes of the same cultural and social patterns which have kept Spain from being a leading power in Europe. The last several centuries have seen Spain fail to be at the center of the political and economic trends of Europe.

Geographically, Chile is situated for excellent economic opportunity, and in the post-Pinochet era has begun to grow some of its export potential. Will Chile be able to break free of its past, its cultures, and its traditions? Will Chile be able to avoid both heavy-handed militaristic authoritarianism, and also avoid doctrinaire socialism, and find that middle route to a free society and a free market?

History is a Family Business!

Historians have long noted that social decay, which sometimes precedes or causes the fall of a civilization, has a number of causes. In such social analysis, causation is often difficult to distinguish from mere correlation, but it is clear that among the causes for the decline of a nation are large and increasing cases of divorce, illegitimate birth, adultery, and a low birth rate.

To be precise, every culture, even those which are thriving and on their way up, experience some amount of these phenomena. Even in societies which are ascending, there will be a few cases of divorce, illegitimacy, and adultery. Small amounts of these circumstances can easily be absorbed by a vital civilization.

But large and increasing numbers of divorces, illegitimate births, and cases of adultery will weaken societal fabric. Fewer births, measured in total or per capita, also undermine political and economic stability.

Author Alvin Toffler notes, however, that there is a personal side to this sociological pattern. While historians are interested only in the macro-level, Toffler points out that there is a large amount of human pain in such trends. Toffler writes that "guilt is associated with the fracture of the family." Historians see a deeper cause underlying these patterns than mere personal choice.

We cannot blame the people who get divorced when divorce is rampant: rather, we blame society for failing to instruct generations of people about how to choose a mate, about how to make an inviolable commitment, and about how to maintain a marriage of mutual respect, affection, and supportiveness.

Toffler writes:

As millions of men and women clamber out of the strewn wreckage of their marriages they, too, suffer agonies of self-blame. And once more, much of the guilt is misplaced. When a tiny minority is involved, the crack-up of their families may reflect individual failures. But when divorce, separation, and other forms of familial disaster overtake millions at once in many countries, it is absurd to think the causes are purely personal. The fracture of the family today is, in fact, part of the general crisis of industrialism — the crack-up of all the institutions

which have served the human race in agricultural or industrial settings, around the globe in different nations, on different continents, in different languages, and with different cultures and religions. We face this pattern in our post-industrial, or late-industrial, era. It has been faced by other civilizations from Rome to China. Toffler reminds us that great societal declines, about which we can read and write so dispassionately, are often accompanied by personal pain.

Shane Harris on Security Technology

On Thursday, February 24, 2012, reporter Shane Harris spoke at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Shane has worked for a number of periodicals, currently for the Washingtonian, and was speaking on current trends in national defense. He earned the Gerald R. Ford prize for defense reporting.

His talk was entitled "The New Cold War: Hackers, Drones, and Cyber Spies" and his thesis was that the "Global War on Terror" is actually over, and than we have entered a new era. In Department of Defense documents, the abbreviation GWOT (Global War on Terror, or, Global War on Terrorism) was frequently used, but is now less so. Instead, Mr. Harris hypothesizes, we are in what he terms a "New Cold War" - beginning around the time at which Osama Bin Laden died, or perhaps a bit earlier, around the time of Hurricane Katrina. Those events would mark the end of the GWOT, and naturally the 9/11 attacks would mark its beginning.

The good news is that, according to Mr. Harris, we won the GWOT. The New Cold War is marked by a different anti-terrorism strategy, in which the drone (or 'RPA' for remotely piloted aircraft) is central. Obama has ordered more drone attacks in a single year than Bush ordered in his entire presidency. This marks a shift in tactics. Drones and assassinations are the hallmarks of this new anti-terrorism strategy.

Another aspect of the New Cold War is that it involves conflicts not on battlefields. Traditionally, military strategists have identified four domains: land, sea, air, and space. A fifth domain is now added: cyberspace. The Obama administration sees cyberspace as a strategic domain. We are entering an era which will feature conflicts not on battlefields, using new and unknown technologies.

It has now become an explicit objective of our military to defend its own cyberspace, and the cyberspace of our civilians.

The dawn of this New Cold War can be traced back to a meeting including Vice-President Dick Cheney, President Bush, and Director of National Intelligence John M. McConnell, among others. At this meeting, the ground action in Iraq was discussed, including the surge which would eventually and decisively turn the tide of the war in favor of America. The next item discussed was an introduction to the serious possibility of cyber attacks.

McConnell posed the question, what if 9/11 had been a cyber attack directed at our nation's financial system? It would have had far worse economic consequences than the actual WTC attack did. It would be a true nightmare scenario. Other administration officials at the meeting confirmed McConnell's description. This was a turning point in American defense strategy. President Bush said that we would have to do everything we could to defend our cyberspace.

At this point in time - the meeting in question would have been in 2007 - this was not a new problem, but there was a new awareness of it at the highest levels of government. Since that time, significant concrete steps have been taken.

The CIA hosted a meeting of major Department of Defense contractors. It informed them that China had been able to gain access to the computers of these contractors, and obtain classified information, for example, about the technology of the joint strike fighter aircraft. The CIA told the contractors that new and strict security would be implemented. This resulted in the Defense Industrial Base Initiative, which is to facilitate collaboration between different private-sector contractors and various security-related government agencies as they work toward better cyber-security.

After receiving his first classified security briefing about cyber-defense issues, prior to the November 2008 election, Obama commented that while he had previously been afraid of losing the election, he was now afraid of winning. Yet Obama has demonstrated perhaps somewhat more intuitive awareness of cyber issues, perhaps related to his age and own personal use of electronics.

In May 2009, Obama gave a speech, stating clearly that there was evidence of foreign organizations were penetrating, or attempting to penetrate, the computer networks which control the electrical power grid. These organizations seemed to be the Chinese government and shadowy entities inside Russia.

Soon thereafter, Google stated that it had evidence that the Chinese government was hacking into personal Gmail accounts.

The Obama administration stated, in November 2011, that Russians entities and the Chinese government had essentially an organized crime venture, stealing data and other intellectual property from U.S. companies.

Observers have speculated that the 'Stuxnet' virus (more properly, a 'worm') was designed by the intelligence or military agencies of some country (possibly Israel or the U.S.), because it seems to target the Iranian nuclear facilities. In any case, the Stuxnet infection at Iranian weapons facilities did slow Iran's progress in building nuclear weapons, and in doing so, may have bought a few months or years of security and peace, and delayed whatever heated confrontation between Iran and the bulk of the world's nations may yet occur.

Turning to drones, or UAV's (unmanned aerial vehicles), Mr. Harris observed that warfare is becoming not only mechanized, but self-running. Compared to a WWII bomber, which required a crew of ten men, UAV's can be controlled by one individual, and with greater accuracy. The trend is toward creating drones which will not require minute-by-minute control, but rather be given merely a general assignment (e.g., take out the target located at certain coordinates) and the drone will proceed to sort out the details for itself.

Drones will be able to communicate with each other and perform group assignments. In WWII, a raid of one thousand planes was staffed by ten thousand crewmen in the air. In the future, a raid of one thousand drones could be staffed by a small handful of computer operators on the ground, and they would only be needed to launch the operation - once given their orders, the drones would be self-directed.

Naturally, the United States is not the only country to realize this. China is actively developing more advanced generations of drones. Drones could do more than surveillance or bombing. In addition to photo-reconnaissance, drones would be capable of activating atomic, biological, or chemical weapons.

It is worth noting that drones will probably be a part of civilian life (in contexts not related to defense or security) in the future. Obvious applications include crop-dusters and cargo flights. The security concern here is that a terrorist could hack into the controls of a civilian drone, deflect it from its private-sector tasks, and use it to create danger.

Drones will be able to not only fly, but also move underwater, on the surface of the water, and on land. Capabilities like climbing up the outside of a tall building may allow drones to, for example, play a major role in rescuing hostages taken by terrorists.

In comparing the "Old Cold War" to the "New Cold War," Mr. Harris notes that both involved expanding the concept of "domain", involved the expansion and innovation of technology, and involved proxies. The U.S. military now has standardized the notion of 'info ops' - informational operations including hacking into a terrorist's cell phone or text messages and discovering who is posting what on the web.

Looking at both the drone aircraft and the issues around cyber-security, Shane Harris noted that there are issues around what is called 'supply-chain security' - many processors, chips, LCD screens, and plasma screens are built outside the U.S. (often East Asia or Pacific Rim areas), and at least two threats exist: first, in the diplomatic tensions leading up to an actual shooting war, suppliers could cut off the flow of such parts into America; second, such parts as do come in could, now or in the future, have hidden features which would be built into them for the purpose of giving a potential enemy of the U.S. - more likely a sovereign state than a terrorist group - access into either cyber capacity or drones, to either neutralize those drones and capacities, or co-opt those drones and capacities for uses other than those assigned to them by the U.S.

Shane Harris gave thought-provoking insight into the nature of security and defense in the coming decades.

A Different Type of Tax Revolution

Everyone knows that taxes are bad. Yes, we also know that they are necessary, but they are still bad. That's why we should have as few taxes as absolutely possible. This has been a guiding principle for meaningful or successful revolutions in many eras and in many places. In the early 1770's, one of the issues which motivated the American Revolution was taxes.

Some revolutions are quiet. Almost nobody noticed when an international tax revolution started between the ordinary consumers and the governments of oil-producing nations. Author Alvin Toffler recounts that

On August 8, 1960, a West Virginia-born chemical engineer named Monroe Rathbone, sitting in his office high over Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, made a decision that future historians might some day choose to symbolize the end of the

industrial economy as it had been know during the first half of the twentieth century, and earlier. Whether we say that we are moving into a different phase of industrialism or moving into a post-industrial phase is not important to the fact that what Mr. Rathbone was thinking about was taxes. The simple notion of taxes was once again about to change the world, just as it did when the American colonists perceived that they had an opportunity to escape British taxation. Two centuries totally changed technology, but they did not change the human desire for freedom.

Few paid any attention that day when Rathbone, chief executive of the giant Exxon Corporation, took steps to cut back on the taxes Exxon paid to the oil-producing countries. His decision, though ignored by the Western press, struck like a thunderbolt at the governments of these countries, since virtually all their revenues derived from oil company payments.

When we think of freedom, we are inclined to think of noble freedoms like freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. To speak about freedom from taxation seems greedy, materialistic, and downright money-grubbing. But those noble freedoms could not exist if it were not for economic freedom. The freedom to use one's money, to buy or to sell, to save or to invest, is a necessary foundation for those more noble liberties. Taxation is a way of limiting economic freedom. Again, it is true that taxes are necessary; but it is also true that they are dangerous, and should be kept as small as possible.

Within a few days the other major oil companies had followed Exxon's lead. And one month later, on September 9, in the fabled city of Baghdad, delegates of the hardest-hit countries met in emergency council. Backed to the wall, they formed themselves into a committee of oil-exporting governments.

Our narrative, thus far, could lend itself to the idea that large American oil companies were exploiting the poor people of third-world countries who happened to have oil beneath the surface of their land. But the citizens of these nations were not being harmed by the reduction in tax revenues which their governments felt. That's because those governments used that revenue, and any other revenue, to support an aristocratic leadership class.

The governments of the Middle East did not then, and do not now, use such revenue to in any way help the poor in their nations. These tax dollars, paid by American consumers, were not going to build schools and hospitals, or to support the elderly. The funds were used to support an extravagant lifestyle of luxury among the royal families and upper classes. So by seeking to avoid paying these taxes, the Americans were harming nobody.

As with all generalizations, there were exceptions. One oil-producing country was, in fact, using some of its tax revenue in the type of 'social' expenditures that western governments envision: Iran. Before the 1979 revolution, Iran was a progressive country. Education, health care, and women's rights were the political agenda.

Responsible historians do not speculate. But one cannot help but wonder, what if the Americans hadn't had a tax revolution, and what if the OPEC organization hadn't been formed in response? Would Iran have taken a different course with the extra income? Would its freedoms have expanded to the point that the 1979 takeover would not have been possible? Would Iran still be a free country today?

We will probably never know the answers to these questions. But we do know that revolutions start when people decide to throw off the oppression of taxes.