Hegeler Institute

THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE

Author(s): Iredell Jenkins
Source: The Monist, Vol. 57, No. 4, Philosophy of War (OCTOBER, 1973), pp. 507-526
Published by: Hegeler Institute
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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE

I shall argue in this paper that our thinking about the question
of war and peace is vitiated at its source by a series of mistaken
as sound coin
assumptions and intentions. These misconceptions pass
because they have the air of truisms: they appear to direct our in
are sure to be successful and are anyway the
quiries along lines that
ones available. At the same time, these errors are so basic that
only
from the start: they are red
they distort both theory and practice
us on a false scent from which we never free
herrings, putting
ourselves because we cannot get close enough to the quarry to
recognize
our mistake. It ismy purpose to expose these errors and
the way to their correction.
point

Three basic mistakes have misled our thinkingaboutwar and

peace. We have employed the wrong categories. We have studied
the wrong data. And we have pursued the wrong goal. These errors
are with each in turn the next. The
intimately related, entailing
we think in focus our attention too narrowly. The data
categories
we pore over yield distorted conclusions. The goals we are thus led
to pursue are mirages that grow fainter the closer we approach
them. It will be necessary to discuss these errors serially, but itmust
be rememberedthat they are in reality tightlyforged links in a
closed chain.
1. The controlling factor in all human undertakings is the con
men terms inwhich they think.
ceptual apparatus that employ-the
These modes of thought largely determine the data we examine, the
we are interested in, the questions we ask, and the pur
phenomena
poses we pursue. In more homely language, this apparatus defines
where we look,what we look for,andwhat we hope todo. And it is
here, at theirveryfirststep,thatour dealingswith theproblemof
war and peace go astray. Our mistake is simple but critical: we
think in terms that focus our attention on one side of the issue,
only

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508 IREDELL JENKINS

and that the more superficial and derivative side. What we do, in
is to treat war as an which is to be un
brief, independent variable,
derstood in isolation from any larger context and dealt with strictly
on its own terms.We appear to act on the assumption that wars are
ultimate and ineradicable features of reality, so there are only two
we can do about them: occurrence and make sure
things delay their
we win them when occur.
they
Seen in the light of reason, this procedure is paradoxical. The
real and final object of our concern is peace. We want to establish
amicable relations among people, and create a community of feeling
and interests. Yet the overwhelming our
proportion of thinking,
and is concerned with war. It is war, in fact and in
talking, acting
threat, that constantly preoccupies us. So the universe of discourse in
which we treat the problem of war and peace has a vocabulary that
is derived entirely from only one of these elements: war. The con
cepts that dominate our thinking'are 'nation states', 'sovereignty',
'foreign powers', 'treaties', 'alliances', 'the balance of power',
'nuclear deterrents', and other such.
War so fascinates us that we are
incapable of viewing it in
and it in context. So we fail to see that war is
perspective putting
one element in a
only complex set of human relationships, which
can be neutralized other and very different elements. Instead, we
by
in thinking that the threat of war can be averted, and war
persist
itself 'won', only in the terms that it itself poses: namely, the
appeal
to force. Peace may be the
object of our prayers, but war is the ob
ject of our efforts.
I remarked above that there is something extremely
paradoxical
about this situation. But there is nothing unusual about it: this is
not an isolated case, but an instance of a
general type of behavior. In
one context after another, we find men to pursue the
neglecting
good they seek and thinkingonly of averting the evil they fear.
Many dichotomies of this sort come easily to mind: peace-war,
health-illness, justice-injustice, equality-discrimination, reha
In every instance, it is the second item
bilitation-punishment.
on which we lavishour efforts.It simplyseemstobe thecase that in
all of the contexts of life men tend to take sound and
satisfactory
situations for granted, and to be concerned only with those that are
or harmful. So instead of to preserve
unpleasant, threatening, trying
peace, we think of wars-or them. In
only preventing winning

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 509

short, we are in the odd position of not seeking the ends that we
desire, but merely trying to avert or cure the outcomes we fear.
Indeed, we do not even think much about these goods, and we
usually define them as the absence of their opposites. So though our
to the war and peace is
approach problem of paradoxical, it is not
anomolous.
2. Our initialmistake in dealing with the issuesof war and
is to employ the wrong categories: our
peace thinking is done ex
clusively in terms of 'war' and associated with it. The im
concepts
mediate result of this mistake is to focus our attention on a narrow
and inadequate range of data. The common a
meaning of 'war' is
conflict between nation states, armies
waged by using every weapon
of forceavailable, inwhich each partyseeks todefeat theother (the
"enemy") and reduce it to a condition of total subservience. As
Clausewitz put it in his classic treatise, "War therefore is an act of
violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will".1
Since we think in terms of war, and this is what war means,
these are the data we turn to when we seek on the
enlightenment
issues of war and peace: we look at the relations between
only
sovereign states, and then only when these states are in a condition
of actual or threatened violent conflict. We thus find ourselves in
the absurd positionof tryingto understandpeace by studying war.
This is like tryingto understandmotion by studyingrest,as thean
cients did, or trying to derive the character of man from the nature
of God, as the mediaevalists did. We deride these latter efforts as
exercises in But we an
futility. employ exactly analogous procedure
in our to peace, and we are
approach perpetually surprised and
frustrated when it does not succeed.
What we are
doing, in sum, is using the pathological case as a
paradigm for studying the sound case. So we become expert only in
the pathology of international relations. Our fascination with the
phenomena of war leads us to certain conclusions that become as
as
unshakeable they are deceptive. We regard the sovereign state as
at once a brute fact and an assume that
impenetrable mystery. We
there must be irreconcilable conflicts of interest among such states.
Since these conflictscan be neither resolvednor arbitrated,they
must
eventually lead to trial by force. Given the facts that we
study,
these conclusions follow naturally.
1. Karl von Clausewitz, On War, Bk. I, Chap. 1.

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510 IREDELL JENKINS

3. These conclusions dictate the purposes and policies that we

pursue in what we fondly call our "quest for peace" but what is ac
tuallya flightfromwar. This flightfollowsno orderlyplan and has
madly froma hawk,we shift
no internallogic: likea rabbitrunning
course with no better than despair.
guidance
The most obvious fact that we notice in the phenomena we
choose to study is that wars result from a conflict of interests among
nation states. Since we regard such states as untouchable, and their
interests as unalterable, all we can do is try to insulate them from
contact with one another. To this end, we establish an elaborate
system of "spheres of influence", "buffer zones", and "client
states", hoping that these will serve as a mechanism of quarantine,
so that when
conflicting interests do touch, they will be so
attenuated that no strong reactions will ensue. If we have to fight
wars, we prefer to do this at a distance and with some one else bear
so the major powers enjoy a temporary
ing the brunt: immunity,
while Korea, Southeast Asia, Africa, and theMiddle East are laid
waste. Having thus taken steps to localize wars and reduce their in
states course: in
tensity, promptly contradict themselves by reversing
their panic to make themselves secure, each creates a web of treaties
of mutual support, thus assuring that any war anywhere threatens to
embroil the whole world.
There is a second fact that soon strikes the eye. You can't wage
war without weapons. So elaborate agreements on the limitations of
armaments are drawn up: so many battleships and submarines, so
many nuclear warheads, so many ICBM's and then so many
ABM's to shoot these down. But this effort is at best half-hearted
and usually hypocritical, for each state is intent on making sure that
it retains the balance of destructive power. In addition to this obses
sionwith the policy of preventingwar by threateningit, there is
another factor that undermines any effort to limit weapons. This is
the conviction that a sound economy depends upon maintaining the
armaments industries, and that peace would bring economic ruin.
This thesis leaves totally unexplained the recent "economic
miracles" of Japan and Germany. But the empirical and logical con
tradictions of this argument make no impression on the convoluted
minds of the leaders of government, labor, and industry. If these il
lusions are incurable, as they seem to be, there is still a simple solu
tion to them: instead of agreeing not to produce any more nuclear
weapons, the nations concerned should agree to destroy them as fast
as they are
produced.

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 511

There is still a third tack by which we try to escape war. This

course is based on our familiarity with two substitutes
widespread
for violence: law and talk.We live with the awareness that within
states law can largely supercede force. Conflicts of interest among
individuals and groups still occur, and some of them very bitter, but
on the whole be settled
they can by
some
legal appeal: arbitration,
a or
mediation, judicial decision, legislation. We have also been
since childhood with the of two very angry
acquainted phenomenon
persons or at one another, and
parties screaming vituperation
the most dire actions, and
threatening finally talking themselves
into a state of exhaustion, so that each retires to regroup his energy
and no overt hostilities actually occur.
-With these facts inmind, we create institutions designed to in
duce states to avail themselves of these techniques of law and talk
rather than war. There have been many and varied efforts intended
to this end, the latest'of which is embodied in the United Nations,
with its numerous subsidiary bodies, and the International Court of
serve as forums before which states can make
Justice. These devices
known their interests, voice their grievances and accusations,
attempt to mobilize in their favor, and even in some
public opinion
cases secure But once we emasculate these
binding judgments. again
in the act of creating them, for their writ runs no further
agencies
than the consent of the parties concerned. We invite states to con
form to established rules and accept authoritative judgments. Each
state agrees, but with the destructive proviso that it can ignore the
terms of the agreement whenever it sees fit.
I do not mean too much to belittle these various forms of
war. The efforts to insulate states, to cut their claws, and
flight from
to teach them etiquette, are all very much worthwhile. In this con
text, a delaying action is clearly better than nothing at all. So these
steps are not wrong. But they are halting. We limp and stumble
no better a
along these paths, with hope than that of staying step
ahead of the catastrophe that looms behind us. If we are to find real
we need to take a different course: we must
security, quite stop try
only to avoid war, and must start trying to achieve peace.
ing

II

Ifwe studyonly the lessonsofwar, that is theonly subjectwe

will master. We may become expert in international law, the forma
tion of alliances, the drafting of treaties, armaments, tactics and

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 512 IREDELL JENKINS

strategy, the wooing of neutrals, and the semantics of systematic

deceit. But we will learn nothing whatsoever about peace.
Advance in this latter direction requires a radical change in ap
must think in a new set of terms, examine fresh data,
proach. We
ask different questions, and bend our efforts toward a hitherto
neglected goal. The first step in this process-the reorientation of
our at once the most necessary and the most difficult.
thinking-is
We have become so habituated to the language of war-whether it
be hot, cold, threatened, wound down, or once more averted-that
we are without even a
vocabulary of peace. The reversal of this
habit of thought is our most pressing task.We cannot understand or
promote peace until we learn to it as a force, a
recognize quality,
and a mode of existence that is a real feature of the human world.
So peace should become the object of our studies.
But to study peace we must first find it.And to do this we must
we
enlarge the range of data to which appeal. For it is very surely
not to be found in the relations between nation states, and
especially
not when these states are at enmity with one another. The kinds of

phenomenal fields that we need to examine are those inwhich con

flicts of interest, feelings of animosity and distrust, differences of
status and privilege, are to be found; but in which the normal state
of affairs is one of 'peace' rather than 'war'. That is, we need to
look at contexts where there are present the same conditions and
forces that constantly threaten or issue in war among states, but
where peace still prevails. Only in this way can we move toward an
understanding of the social forces and circumstances, and the
human attitudes and relationships, that serve tomaintain peace even
under conditions that threaten seriously to disrupt it.
Many such contexts lie ready to hand. Among the more
familiar and available for study are these: marriage; race

relationships and the situation of minority groups; labor and

management; the various functional groups that are of a com
parts
mon institutional enterprise, such as faculty, students, and ad
ministration within a university. To get closer to the type of situa
tion with which we normally associate war, there are regionalisms
of many sorts within a nation state: economic,
geographic,
historical, cultural.
Itwill be objected that thesefieldsofferno properanalogywith
the state, and so yield no data on which to base a study of war and
are all embraced within the
peace: they sovereign state, with the

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 513

result that disputes among them are necessarily settled by a legal

decision and not a resort to violence. But this objection is based on
two obsessive fictions: the ultimacy of the sovereign
nothing but
state and the uniqueness of war as a collision between such states.
There are certainly important differences between these cases. The
of patriotismdo give the
habit of legalobedience and the sentiment
state a position of preeminence; and this is reinforced by the state's
virtual monopoly of organized force. But I would insist that these
are not so as
differences nearly radical they first appear, and actually
show themselves as similarities to a closer and less prejudiced ex
amination. There are habits of obedience other than that to law,
and patriotism is not the only form of loyalty. If we are to under
stand peace on its own terms and as a real feature of life, rather than

knowing itonly as theabsenceofwar, it is thesesimilaritiesthatwe

must study.
All of thesefieldsare permeatedby the samebasic ambivalence
of amityand discord. In each of themwe findpeople livingmore or
less closely together, feeling some degree of friendship and attach
ment, sharing certain interests and purposes, and pooling their ef
forts for their mutual advantage. In each of them we also find com
and estrangement, feelings of animosity and distrust, con
petition
flicts of interest and disagreements about goals, differences of status
and privilege, and tensions that often lead to friction and a rupture
of the relationship.
Furthermore, we always find that this balance between amity
and discord is volatile and unstable. It is constantly shifting, with
now one element and now the other becoming more obtrusive.
Labor and management will at times find a common interest in
promoting efficiencyand increasingproductivity;but then the
working conditionsthatone group seekswill clashwith theprofit
margin that the other feels it needs. Faculty, students, and ad
ministration are all concerned with "quality education". But each
group has itsown interpretation
of thisgoal, and thesemay diverge
And each also has interests that are more strictly its own
sharply.
and that conflict with the common goal: the administration wants
wants lighterteachingloads, and the
tokeep costsdown, the faculty
students want more individual attention. So all groups are constantly
in their attitudes and relationships with one another, mak
shifting
a
ing and breaking alliances, and seekingfor commonground that
will give each itsprivateadvantage. In all human groupingsthereis

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 514 IREDELL JENKINS

the same perpetual ebb and flow of centrifugal and centripetal

forces.

We also find in each of these contexts close to

analogies
patriotismand thehabit of legal obedience. Indeed,without these
no group can grow to any size, achieve any
equivalents degree of
or endure for very The members of a a
organization, long. family,
a labor union, a team, a corps of
minority group, management
a or cultural a bond of at
professionals, geographic region, all feel
tachment to one another and to the group as such. The character
of these feltbonds varywidely fromgroup to group,
and intensity
and from time to time within the same group. But they are always
there. The loyalties that men feel are complex and variable, as are
the obligations that they acknowledge.History rebuts the notion
that the hold of the state upon our emotions and obedience is final
and supreme.
we find close
Finally, both within and among these groups
to the armed conflict of nation states that we call 'war'. If
analogies
war, as Clausewitz says, is "an act of violence intended to compel
our opponent to fulfill our will", then it is a
commonplace of human
relations. Husbands intimidate and coerce their wives by sheer brute
strength; and wives retaliate with subtler weapons, such as their
tongues and their tears.When we consider some of the other and
larger fields that I mentioned above, this resort to violence as a
means of
enforcing one's will becomes altogether overt and obvious.
Labor unions use such devices as slowdowns, phoning in sick,
strikes, picket lines, and physical beatings to those who resist these
measures; management replies with lockouts, the employment of
nonunion labor, the use of strong-arm forces, and eventually the
closing of the plant and its removal to a friendlier spot.
The resort to violence in some form or other-to might rather
than right, to power rather than persuasion-is a familiar oc
currence in all contexts of human affairs. If a group finds its

relationship with another group unsatisfactory-if it feels that it is

or and its claims denied-and
being neglected exploited, legitimate
if it cannot effectthe change itwants throughestablishedorderly
use whatever mode and
procedures, then itwill often degree of force
it can command. Strikes, riots, lootings, mass demonstrations, oc
cupation of buildings, expulsions, excommunication, price-cutting,
tariffs and quotas, expropriation: all of these, in a more direct or
attenuated form, are acts of war. They are unilateral actions that

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 515

rupture established relationships and methods of settlement, and

through which one group seeks to use its strength to compel another
to fulfillitswill.We acknowledge thissimilarityinmany common
phrases, such as gang war, labor war, the war of the sexes, war on
the waterfront, price war-we even an individual as
speak of being
at war with himself.
The war and the sense of discord and
phenomena of peace-in
harmony, conflict and order-characterize the human scene as a
whole; are not restricted to the relations between nation states.
they
Yet we persist in studying them only in this latter context, and then
only under conditions of war. To escape the dead end to which this
line of inquiry leads, we must instead focus our attention on such
fields as those discussed above, where these phenomena occur in far
richer and more varied forms. In these fields we find both the con
ditions that make for war and war itself: fear, distrust, animosity,
conflicts of interest, differences of status, and the resort to force as a
means to secure one's purposes. But in these
impose one's will and
fieldswe also find thaton thewhole peace prevails, even if it is
precarious and punctuated by violence. Groups may forsake persua
sion, refuse compromise, renounce the law, defy the state, and resort
to force in some form in their a
dealings. But they do not engage in
struggleto thedeath, thefightisusuallybrief,andwhen the issue is
settled the groups are easily reconciled and resume normal relations.
There is somethingabout thesefields thatminimizes the risk and
reduces the frequency of conflicts, keeps them within bounds when
they occur, and facilitates reconciliation: in short, that operates to
preserve the peace and restore itwhen it is broken. So it is here that
we can best the character and conditions of peace and its
study
to war.
relationship
When we do this, there are several lessons that are soon
taught
us. In the first war and peace are not
place, it is made clear that
are segments a continuum, different
polar opposites. They along
modes of the same phenomenon. Thinking as we do in clear-cut
we the extreme cases: war is the armed con
categories, regard only
flict of nation states, and peace is what follows when swords are
beaten into ploughshares. And so we neglect all of the intermediate
cases-the mixed modes-which lie between these extremes and
actually constitute by far the larger part of this continuum. Total
war and total peace are abstractions that are never realized in the
relations of individuals and groups. Instead, every human

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 516 IREDELL JENKINS

relationship is ambivalent, with each party appreciating the benefits

it brings but resenting the sacrifices it imposes. Honeymoons do not
last forever; labor contracts soon to both
begin gall parties; majority
and minoritygroups are by definitionnever fully reconciled; the
CivilWar is stilla factorinAmerican social and political life; and
though Canada and the United States may share the world's longest
unguarded frontier, they often glare across it. Friendship and
hostility, confidence and mistrust, mutuality and estrangement, are
everywhere closely interwoven in human affairs.
It follows from this that it is impossibleto abolishwar in the
sense of occurrence of tensions and conflicts of in
preventing the
terest between states and other groups. We can of course take steps
to minimize these causes of war, and our varied efforts to that end
are we delude ourselves ifwe think that
certainly worthwhile. But
these devices can do more than delay and localize war. For the
forces and circumstances that make for war are rooted in the brute
facts of human individuality, diversity, and self-concern. Since these
facts are unalterable, the whole human scene and all human
are infected with divisiveness.
relationships inevitably
Once we recognize this, we are ready for the last and most im
portant lesson. The only way to work positively for peace is by
a sense of to contain this per
cultivating unity that is strong enough
vasive tendency to divisiveness. In human affairs as much as in
organic evolution, diversity is the source of progress. It is also the
source of divisiveness and hence of conflict. The exact nature and
consequences of this human diversity, and the simultaneous promise
and threat that it poses to the quest for unity and peace, can be
better understood ifwe look more closely at the actual structuring
that pervades all social life.Wherever we look in this context we
confront wholes, or unities-what we call groups. These wholes,
like all others, contain parts-individual persons or subgroups. And
these parts always retain a large measure of individual integrity and
independence of action. Through various affinities, men coalesce
into such groups as nations, races, economic classes, institutions,
professional castes, local regions, families, and others. These groups
form an extremely complex vertical and horizontal matrix, sustain
ing intricate relationships and interactions among themselves. Every
element within this field, including even the individual man at one
extreme and mankind at the other, is both a whole and a part. As a
whole-a or has an inner cohesion and
unity entity-each

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 517

character, pursues its particular purposes, and acts to protect its own
interests. As a part-an element or constituent-each is closely
dependent upon the other parts and upon the whole, has purposes
and interests in common with them, participates in group affairs,
and accepts group decisions.
Since every item in this series is at once a whole and a part, each
is also both an end in itself and a means to other ends. A family, a
labor union, a university, a nation state, has an internal structure
and integrity that it seeks to preserve and ends of its own that it
seeks to further. But each must also be sensitive to the interests and
concerns of its parts, or members. And yet must be
again, each
responsiveto thegoals and demands of thewhole of which it is a
a final each contains parts that have
part. To add complication,
and each is itself a part of several wholes whose
divergent purposes,
purposes are
again divergent.
This crisscrossing of wholes and parts, ends and means, is a
familiar phenomenon once our attention is called to it.A labor un
ion, for example, is highly organized and pursues certain purposes
(ends) that are proper to it as a specific social group. Itmust serve in
a reasonable manner the interests (ends) of itsmembers, and these
interests will certainly be diverse, with different segments of the
membership differingin the relative significancethey attach to
these various interests. Finally, the union is itself a part of several
larger wholes-such as a coalition of unions, a political party, an
organized social movement, the United States-which will make
different demands upon it. The same is true of all social groups,
from the nation state to the family. The entire human scene is an in
tricate field in which the forces of mutuality and divisiveness en
counter one another in constantly
shifting patterns.
Reflection upon these facts should rid us once for all of the
simplistic dichotomy of war-or-peace. For what we always find is an
two conditions. When we
intermingling of these recognize and
we can frame definitions that more
accept this, truly reflect reality
and suggest a more positive approach to the problem of war and
peace.
'Peace' designates those relationships and situations in which
the sense of unity-'community' might be the better word-is ap
preciably stronger than the forces of divisiveness: shared purposes
are felt as greater
outweigh conflicts of interest, benefits conferred
than sacrifices imposed, and the decisions of established authority

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 518 IREDELL JENKINS

are even when adverse. 'War' those

accepted designates
relationships and situations in which the forces of divisiveness are
than the sense of some or all feel
appreciably stronger unity: parties
that they are being treated unfairly and arbitrarily, their vital in
terests appear to them to be threatened, so
they reject authority and
seek to exert pressure other means-violent or non
by
upon the power they can wield.
violent-depending
It is obvious that in these definitions the expression 'ap
preciably stronger' is itself undefined. But this indeterminateness
represents factual accuracy rather than definitional laxness. For
there are numerous cases in which the two sets of conditions
described above are both so prominent and so interwoven that it is
to say whether 'war' or are
impossible 'peace' prevails. For instance,
the Black Panthers, Miss Davis and her followers, and the
Angela
adherents of the of Africa at war or peace
Independent Republic
with theUnited States?All of thesegroups have claimed bitterly
that the government is
"making war" against them with a view to
their destruction, and
they have asserted that they are themselves
"at war" with the United States, with the purpose of
overthrowing
its form of government. Yet Miss Davis continues to exercise her
citizenship, and a jury found her innocent. Again, what are we to
make of the struggles that take
place every few years involving the
and maritime the railroad and
railway unions, shipping consor
tiums, and the federal government? And how in the world should
the current situation in Northern Ireland be described?
The best we can ever for in any social context is to main
hope
tain a balance of the conditions of peace over those of war. So the
problem is to domesticate divisiveness. As I have suggested above,
the solution lies in the cultivation of a sense of can recon
unity that
cile diversities and can either transform divisiveness into
mutuality
or at least cushion the conflicts it occasions. Two obvious
questions
then arise. How is this done when it is done, as it so
frequently is in
such contexts as the
family, majority and minority groups, labor and
management, and even in international relations? And what is it
about the relations between certain nation states that so often leads
to failure?

III
When we examine those contexts in which on the whole peace
prevails, I thinkwe find two sets of conditions that are chiefly

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 519

for this happy outcome. When these are stated, one

responsible
turns out to be a and the other a
commonplace paradox.
The commonplace is this: Peace becomes a habit. The members
of any particular group, relationship, or enterprise simply take its
forgranted,without any explicitor probably
existenceand integrity
even conscious acknowledgement. Within and between such groups
there will be clashes of personality, conflicts of interest, feelings of
resentment of exploitation and discrimina
animosity and distrust,
tion, difficulties of communication and failures of understanding,
harsh words and threats, and resorts to violence in various forms.
But no one of the parties has any thoughtof breaking off the
or the group. The most that anyone in
relationship breaking up
tends is not to destroy or even subdue the other, but merely to break
down his resistance on a particular point. This is the usual attitude
of members of a family, a union, a minority group, or the factions
within a university or other institution.
The general circumstances that foster this sense of unity and
are familiar: a common origin,
preserve the peace feelings of
heritage, and tradition; mutual dependence and benefit; ease of
one
communication; shared values and purposes; familiarity with
another's ways; the sense of participation in group affairs and con
fidence in the fairness of group decisions. But I think that what un
derlies and outweighs all of these considerations is the fact that

peace becomes a habit of mind. The group simplyappears to its

members as their natural and necessary milieu of existence, and it
never occurs to them, save perhaps as a passing fancy, to conceive of
life in other terms. And the same is true of the feelings that the
members of two or more groups entertain toward one another: the
established relationship is accepted by them as a feature of reality
that it never enters their minds to break off or disown. They might
want to alter the structure of the group or the terms of the
an
relationship,but that is all.Membership in thegroup becomes
essential feature of the manner in which men perceive themselves.

Belonging toa group (the termitselfis indicative),and hence enjoy

with themembers of certainothergroups,
ingdefiniterelationships
come to be felt as not mere existential accidents:
personal attributes,
without these associations, not only would the course of their lives
be changed, but they themselves would become different persons. A
wife or husband may sometimes yearn to be single again; a union
member may dream of being an independent artisan, or a middle

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 520 IREDELL JENKINS

level corporate manager of having his own business; a person may

become angrywith his churchor his countryand thinkof leavingit;
an officer in the armed services, or a member of a
university faculty,
may become disgusted and contemplate a faction in a
resigning;
or a social action movement may become or
political party impatient
disillusioned and threaten to bolt; friends quarrel and cease to speak
for a while. But these ruptures rarely leave the realm of imagina
tion, and if they become real they are usually soon restored. For if
these and relationships have endured for any time and
memberships
become really meaningful, enter into the very fabric of one's
they
life and personality, and to cease to to them would be as
belong
traumatic as losing one's sight or hearing. Peace becomes a habit in
the sense that it generates modes of perception, feeling, thought,
evaluation, and behavior that are quite spontaneous and largely in
dependent of actual circumstances. Where the habit prevails, men
will continue to live and work together in relative harmony even
when conditions are such as to create currents of
powerful
divisiveness. A family, a union, a political party, a university, and a
nation state can survive tremendous stresses and strains if their
members have acquired this habit of peace in their attitude toward
the group and their relations with one another.
The paradoxical feature of peace lies in the fact that it thrives
best in those contexts where individuals and groups stand in several
different and conflicting relationships with one another. Superficial
ly and abstractly, one might think that peace ismost easily secured
where the parties to be reconciled are the fewest in number and the
relation between them is the simplest. This might even be true in
reality where the group is very small, its structure is primitive, the
bond between itsmembers is based on vital concerns, and there are
strong external pressures. A family struggling to survive in the
a a union
wilderness, revolutionary party, just being organized, a
small state threatenedby itsneighbors: in thesecases thebond of
sense of be extremely intense, indeed almost
peace-the unity-can
fanatical,as themembers of thegroup feel thatthe slightestinternal
dissension will mean destruction. But such cases are of rare oc
currence and brief duration. The group in or loses its
question wins
and even soon over the spoils.
struggle, victory brings bickering
Peace procured on these terms is and temporary.
parochial
Examination of those contexts where peace is at all
large and
shows that are characterized a complex structure,
lasting they by

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 521

and especiallyby an intricateand fluid setof relationshipsrunning

among individuals and groups. Here the various ends that men pur
sue and the various roles
they fill lead them to become members of
various groups; and this in turn leads them into a
variety of
relationships with other men and groups. The allegiances of men
are thus
shifting and unpredictable, as one or the other of their con
cerns dominates their feelings and motivates their actions.
Under theseconditionsan individualcan neverbe fullydefined
by his membership in any singlegroup: he can never be treatedas
a "such and such". A person will always hold
merely plural
membership: he or she will be single or married, rich or poor, black
or white, home owner or tenant, tax
payer or welfare recipient,
liberal or conservative, unskilled laborer or trained
professional, and
so on and on and on. These be combined in a
memberships may
multitude of ways, and theirrelativeappeal will varywidely from
person to person and from time to time for the same person. This
means that an individual is never
totally identified with the purposes
of any singlegroup: his differentinterests
commithim indifferent
directions, so he is continually subject to conflicting loyalties.
This is the typical situation in every social whole of any con
siderable size, be it a labor union, an institution or a
profession,
a or a nation state. The members of
minority group, political party,
any one of these groups will also belong to several other groups. In
such a situation, no group can ever count fully on the allegiance of
itsmembers, and the members never commit themselves
exclusively
to one group. The same groups will
ally for some causes and fight
one another over others; and individuals will
support one group in
one case, another in a different one. What we find in these
situations is an interweaving and interference of the lines of
amity
and discord, shared purposes and conflicts of interest,
participation
and alienation. As a result, internal tensions are abundant and often
And theyerupt in themany formsof socialdissent,disaffec
intense.
and even violence that are such familiar
tion, disturbance, aspects of
group life.
But the very and fluctuation of these tensions,
proliferation
representingas theydo thedifferentinterests
ofmen, preventthe
formation of any large and lasting faction that can threaten the ex
istence of the larger group. A confederation of labor unions, or a
coalition of industrial and financial magnates, may seek to become a
major political power bymustering itsmembers in supportof par

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 522 IREDELL JENKINS

ticular candidates or policies. But each group will find that many of
its members will desert it because of their stronger allegiance to
other groups concerned with other causes, such as tax reform, bus
war inVietnam, sex
ing, the integration, welfare reform, racial and
ual equality, or the protection of the environment. Any effort by any
faction to seize control of a state, a union, a university, a social
movement, a revolutionary party, or any other groups runs afoul of
the fact that the members whose total support it needs are not robots
to to one issue, but human
programmed respond only beings of
so or relied
varied interests and loyalities, they cannot be controlled
on. Because are in many battles, their
people perpetually engaged
can for any single final assault.
energies rarely be mustered
We are thus
brought
to the
paradoxical conclusion that war, as
I have defined it, is a necessary concommitant and ingredient of
peace. Peace cannot be secured by the elimination of these tensions
and conflicts, for that is impossible. And peace cannot be preserved
minimizing the number and
by simplifyingthe group structure,
so to achieve a
reducing the relationships of subgroups, and seeking
higher degree of group cohesion: this may delay violent confronta
tion, but will make itmore severe when it comes. Rather, peace is
best served by fostering the proliferation and complication of
relationships within and among groups. In this way the number of
tensions and the frequency of conflicts are admittedly increased. But
these tensions and conflicts are weakened, and their duration is
shortened, because of the divided commitments of group members.
Since the interests and concerns of individuals are diverse, so are
their loyalities. Hence, the various tensions between groups tend to
cancel one another out, and a balance is achieved. This balance is
certainly volatile and fluctuating, with the forces that sustain it un
constant realignment. But since these forces (or
dergoing groups)
must continually make compromises in order to accommodate their
diverse membership, and since they are mutually wary of each
other, with all of them determined that no one or few shall establish
a the balance tends to be stable and self-maintaining.
preeminence,
It is thisperpetualflux and realignmentof subgroups,joinedwith
the senseof unitythatpervadesall of theirmembers, thatkeeps the
peace in all social contexts, from the family to the state.
It is simplythe case thatunder theconditionsofmodern society
it is impossible to achieve complete unitywithin any group or
between any set of groups. The diversity of men's interests and the

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 523

we try
complexity of social structure make divisiveness inevitable. If
to attain unity and peace by the and issues,
simplifying relationships
we succeed the group around two extreme
only in polarizing
are so strong and so
positions. Then the forces of divisiveness sharp
ly opposed that the sense of unity cannot neutralize and contain
them. This simplification makes mountains out of molehills, each
faction sees the issue as one of life or death, and the group is dis
we stand, divided we fall", has
rupted. The old adage, "United
been rendered obsolete by the vast expansion of man's concerns and
motto for today is rather we
pursuits. The appropriate "Realigning
stand, polarized we fall". The maintainance bf peace now depends
upon the presence of forces of divisiveness that are numerous, dis
con
persed, and fluctuating in the alliances they form. Under these
ditions the sense of unity, weakened though it is by the fragmenta
tion of society, can still prevail against dissension because the dis
senting forces themselves prevent the coalescence of any single force
that can successfully threaten the group. That is, we must seek to
avoid static polarization in favor of dynamic realignment. As I have
we cannot eliminate war. What we can and
argued throughout,
must do is work to assure the
symbiotic coexistence of war and
peace, in which the very forces and circumstances that make forwar
are instead to the service of peace. Peace our
put depends upon
achieving this paradoxical symbiosis.

IV

In terms of the preceding discussion we can see at once what

distinguishes the relations between nation states from other social
relations and why armed conflict between such states is so frequent.
I have argued that the maintainance of peace depends upon two
conditions: the cultivation of a habit of peace and the
principal
forces of divisiveness so that is
proliferation of the polarization
avoided. Within nation states, and within and among their sub
groups, these conditions are normally satisfied, whether spon
taneouslyor by diligent and skillfulefforts.
But both of these conditions are frequently absent in the
relations among states. Instead, everything often works in just the
oppositedirection.Far fromthehabit of peace being cultivated,the
peoples of some states are taught from their earliest age that the
peoples of certain other states are their natural enemies. From the
very atmosphere in which they grow up, children of different coun

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 524 IREDELL JENKINS

tries imbibe feelings of suspicion and hostility toward one another:

it is as though being an enemy of so-and-so were as much a part of
one's nature as being a boy or a girl, tall or short, rich or poor.
Under these conditions, mutual an in
enmity becomes virtually
herited rather than an acquired character.
For each country, then, it becomes a sacred duty to keep its
citizens alert and prepared against the threat of destruction from
these vicious predators: you warn people against these natural
enemies as you warn children against fire, snakes, and automobiles.
So the attitudes that are drilled-almost bred-into people
are
those of mistrust and animosity. All of this is too familiar to need
detailing. It is thehabit ofwar that is cultivatedinus all, and it is
done so assiduously, and withal so sincerely, that it appears to be not
a habit at all but an instinct that is necessary to survival.
At the same time, the relationship between the peoples of two
differentcountriesisoften starklysimpleand radicallypolarized. In
my relations and dealings with my fellow countrymen, I assume
many characters and play many roles: I am black or white, rich or
poor, urban or rural dweller, hawk or dove, for or against busing,
Democrat or tax incentives or
Republican, enjoying suffering from
tax loopholes, retired or on welfare, concerned for the
comfortably
or intent on so on a
quality of the environment profits, and through
horde of fluctuating interests and concerns that ally me now with
one group, now with another. But inmy relations with the
peoples
of other countries, I am simply an American and they are only
Russians or Chinese, Frenchmen or Germans. It is to only a
minimal degree that through various affiliations that I have in this
country I am variously affiliated with different groups in other
countries.This relationshipis extremelysimple in formand empty
of content.There are few ifany linesof conflictingand fluctuating
interests that run across national boundaries to divide the
allegiances of people and produce a balance among the forces of
divisiveness.So these forcescrystalizesolidlyaround the poles of
nationalism.The conditionof alienation that is thuscreated is fatal
to the war.
symbiotic coexistence of peace and Instead, this polariza
tion strengthensthe habit of peace within each countrybut breeds
the habit of war between these countries.
The conclusion to be drawn fromthis isbrutalbut inescapable.
No organizationor policy that isbased on theultimacyof thenation
state can the peace over any considerable
possibly maintain reach of

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 THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE 525

time. For it is the fatal irony of nationalism that it fosters peace on a

war on a we will accept
parochial scale but breeds global scale. If
this fact, it can teach us an important practical lesson. This is that
the only effective way towork for peace is through programmes and
organizations that deal with issues that cut across national boun
daries. We need to have more and more people from more and
more countries on to which national
working together problems
boundaries are irrelevant. Heaven knows there are enough such
problemscryingout forattention:pollutionof air andwater; flood
control; agricultural production; conservation and allocation of ex
haustible natural resources; population control; eradication of
endemic diseases; education-this is a casual and partial list. Beside
their inherent importance, the significance of these problems for the
cause of peace lies in the fact that
they lead us to employ categories,
to data, and pursue are defined
appeal goals that by nature, not by
nations. We are forced to think and act in terms of
topography,
climate, the characteristics of the environment, natural forces,
and-above all-of the needs of men as human beings rather than
as citizens of a state. Floods, famine, l ad
particular poisoning, and
the malaria with no
mosquito affect people regard for their
For men intent on these ills, national boundaries
nationality. curing
become no more than lines drawn on a map, artificial incumbrances
that must be swept aside.
In as these, countries are forced to
dealing with such problems
cooperate, even if their wills. So the peoples of these coun
against
tries, through working together, gradually acquire the vocabulary
and the habits of peace. I think it can be taken for certain that the
conflicts of interest and feelings of animosity among various groups
within the United States-rich and poor, labor and management,
black and white, farmer and middleman-are far greater than
those between the peoples of the United States and Russia. To put
the matter in more positive and promising terms, it is clear that
American and Russian scientists have far more interests and con
cerns in common than either group has with laborers, farmers, the

managerial class, and the military in its own country. And the same
is true, of course, of the laborers, farmers, and other classes.
The most useful service we can perform in the interest of peace
is to encourage and strengthen these natural affiliations by every
means available. The most obvious tools to use in this work are
those that are put at our disposal by the United Nations. In choos

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 526 IREDELL JENKINS

to
ing and using these, it is above all important recognize that the
bodies in the United Nations are not the
truly significant Security
Council and General Assembly. In fact, these bodies are in many
ways to peace: they enshrine and perpetuate
impediments
nationalism; they incite nation states to assert their sovereignty and
ultimacy in the most extreme terms; and they often exacerbate
relations that are already sufficiently strained. The real usefulness of
the United Nations lies in its various subsidiary organizations
devoted to practical and supranational problems, such as pollution,
food production, child care, health, and so forth. For the thousands
upon thousands of persons who are involved in or affected by the
work of these organizations, nation states are certainly real entities
that must be taken into account. But they are not regarded as ul
timate, much less as sacrosanct. Rather, they are inconveniences, to
be used as necessary and circumvented when possible. For these
organizations, the significant realities are human beings of diverse
types and situations a finite and not
inhabiting always hospitable
earth. In carrying on their work, it is inevitable that these bodies
will create more and stronger supranational affiliations. And in this
way they will further the proliferation and fluctuation of forces of
divisiveness that cut across national boundaries, thus fostering the
habit of peace and inhibiting the course of polarization among
as midwife tomost of our
peoples. This is the process that has served
present nation states, and there is no reason why it cannot perform
the same service for the one world in which lies our only hope for
peace.
IREDELL JENKINS
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

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