Why War?

This question is nearly always posed rhetorically, as in: there is no “good” reason for war, is there? But responses to Why War? that grasp it literally are surely also called for. At the very least, merely insisting on war’s moral vacuity has sadly failed to drive it to extinction. Writing two centuries ago Clausewitz claimed that “war is the continuation of policy by other means”. This phrase concisely frames the problem this panel intends to address.  

What really are the reasons for war? Definitionally, aggression is at its root. And yet aggression, both predatory and defensive, is a natural state, a form of behavior and a motivating force not limited to humanity. Does humankind express uniquely a surplus of destructiveness and sadism? If the answer to this question is yes, what then might account for this excess beyond Nature’s provision? 

A psychological response to this puzzle came in Freud’s writings, but especially in Civilization and Its Discontents. Here Freud describes how social organization requires the repression of our inborn instincts, but the ensuing and unavoidable conflicts arising between individuals and groups simmer and ultimately boil over. Aggression then erupts in its destructive mode; push comes to shove comes to grenade, and so forth. Psychoanalysts following along Freud’s path, among them Marcuse, Fromm, and Fanon, expanded his analysis into the sociological realm. According to these theorists it is a “sickness” in the social structure – economic, racist, imperialist – that leads to greater frustrations and greater aggression; that social oppression and not simple psychological repression is what causes that excess of destruction beyond what we find in the animal world.

Our previous roundtable, Otherness, introduced another important element in this discussion. Xenophobia and nationalism seem to evolve and grow like weeds, both across the globe and as a constant strain within history. What role do nationalism and tribalism play in the indelible history of war? Most importantly, from among these reasons for war what might we address to bring an end to the sort of pain and suffering that is too horrid to contemplate without an injury to our souls?