The Functions of War
This is also true of its extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitary activities of society. These effects are less apparent in complex industrial societies like our own than in primitive cultures, the activities of which can be more more easily and fully comprehended.
The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic "waste."
The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective.
The phrase "wasteful but necessary," applied not only to war expenditures, but to most of the "unproductive" commercial activities of our society, is a contradiction in terms.
In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the economy of supply and demand.
As such, it provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity to produce more than is required for their economic survival (regardless of the equities of distribution of goods within them), military spending can be said to furnish the only balance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies. The fact that war is "wasteful" is what enables it to serve this function.
And the faster the economy advances, the heavier this
balance wheel must be.
The reference here is to shooting war, but it applies equally to the general war economy as well.
The principal economic function of war, in our view, is that it provides just such a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function with the the various forms of fiscal control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of men and units of production.
It is not to be
confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare
programs; once initiated, such programs normally become integral
parts of the general economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary
Weapons technology structures the economy. According to the writer cited above,
This is not "ironic or
revealing," but essentially a simple statement of fact.
A former Secretary of the Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption thus:
fundamental nonmilitary utility of war in the economy is far more
widely acknowledged than the scarcity of such affirmations as that
quoted above would suggest.
The most familiar example is the effect of the "peace threats" on the stock market, e.g.,
Savings banks solicit deposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g.,
A more subtle case in point was the recent refusal of the Department of Defense to permit the West German government to substitute nonmilitary goods for unwanted armaments in its purchase commitments from the United States; the decisive consideration was that the German purchases should not affect the general (nonmilitary) economy.
Other incidental examples
are to be found in the pressures brought to bear on the Department
when it announces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a
"wasteful" form of "waste"), and in the usual coordination of
stepped-up military activities (as in Vietnam in 1965) with
dangerously rising unemployment rates.
The political functions of war have been up to now even more critical to social stability.
It is not surprising, nevertheless,
that discussions of economic conversion for peace tend to fall
silent on the matter of political implementation, and that
disarmament scenarios, often sophisticated in their weighing of
international political factors, tend to disregard the political
functions of the war system within individual societies.
It can do this in a credible manner only if it implies the threat of maximum political organization for this purpose - which is to say that it is organized to some degree for war. War, then, as we have defined it to include all national activities that recognize the possibility of armed conflict, is itself the defining element of any nation’s existence vis-a-vis any other nation.
Since it is historically axiomatic that
the existence of any form of weaponry insures its use, we have used
the word "peace" as virtually synonymous with disarmament. By the
same token, "war" is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The
elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national
sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.
The historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other disintegrative elements.
The organization of a society for the
possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. It is
ironic that this primary function of war has been generally
recognized by historians only where it has been expressly
acknowledged - in the pirate societies of the great conquerors.
On a day-to-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police, armed organizations charged expressly with dealing with "internal enemies" in a military manner. Like the conventional "external" military, the police are also substantially exempt from many civilian legal restraints on their social behavior. In some countries, the artificial distinction between police and other military forces does not exist.
On the long-term basis, a government’s emergency war
powers - inherent in the structure of even the most libertarian of
nations - define the most significant aspect of the relation between
state and citizen.
The further progress of
automation can be expected to differentiate still more sharply
between "superior" workers and what Ricardo called "menials," while
simultaneously aggravating the problem of maintaining an unskilled
Until it is developed, the continuance of the war
system must be assured, if for no other reason, among others, than
to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society
requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of
its internal organization of power.
Under this heading, we will examine a nexus of functions served by
the war system that affect human behavior in society. In general,
they are broader in application and less susceptible to direct
observation than the economic and political factors previously
This function has been critical in periods of rapid change. The danger signals are easy to recognize, even though the stigmata bear different names at different times. The current euphemistic clichés - "juvenile delinquency" and "alienation" - have had their counterparts in every age. In earlier days these conditions were dealt with directly by the military without the complications of due process, usually through press gangs or outright enslavement.
But it is not hard to visualize, for example,
the degree of social disruption that might have taken place in the
United States during the last two decades if the problem of the
socially disaffected of the post-World War II period had not been
foreseen and effectively met. The younger, and more dangerous, of
these hostile social groupings have been kept under control by the Selective Service System.
As a control device over the hostile, nihilistic,
and potentially unsettling elements of a society in transition, the
draft can again be defended, and quite convincingly, as a "military"
The typical European standing army (of fifty years ago) consisted of
This is still largely true, if less apparent. In a sense, this function of the military as the custodian of the economically or culturally deprived was the forerunner of most contemporary civilian social-welfare programs, from the W.P.A. to various forms of "socialized" medicine and social security.
interesting that liberal sociologists currently proposing to use the Selective Service System as a medium of cultural upgrading of the
poor consider this a novel application of military practice.
least one small Northern European country, plagued with
uncontrollable unrest among its "alienated youth," is considering
the expansion of its armed forces, despite the problem of making
credible the expansion of a non-existent external threat.
This much is obvious;
the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must
seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of
the "enemy" sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance
to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the
society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented
magnitude and frightfulness.
The remoteness of personal decision from social consequence in a modern society makes it easy for its members to maintain this attitude without being aware of it. A recent example is the war in Vietnam; a less recent one was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
In each case, the extent and gratuitousness of the slaughter were abstracted into political formulae by most Americans, once the proposition that the victims were "enemies" was established.
The war system makes such an
abstracted response possible in nonmilitary contexts as well. A
conventional example of this mechanism is the inability of most
people to connect, let us say, the starvation of millions in India
with their own past conscious political decision-making. Yet the
sequential logic linking a decision to restrict grain production in
America with an eventual famine in Asia is obvious, unambiguous, and
To take a handy example,
A Rand analyst puts it in more general terms and less rhetorically:
The point may seem too obvious for iteration, but
is essential to an understanding of the important motivational
function of war as a model for collective sacrifice.
If one were to limit consideration to
those cultures whose regional hegemony was so complete that the
prospect of "war" had become virtually inconceivable - as was the
case with several of the great pre-Columbian societies of the
Western Hemisphere - it would be found that some form of ritual
killing occupied a position of paramount social importance in each.
Invariably, the ritual was invested with mythic or religious
significance; as with all religious and totemic practice, however,
the ritual masked a broader and more important social function.
That the "earnest" was not an adequate
substitute for genuine military organization when the unthinkable
enemy, such as the Spanish conquistadores, actually appeared on the
scene in no way negates the function of the ritual. It was
primarily, if not exclusively, a symbolic reminder that war had once
been the central organizing force of the society, and that this
condition might recur.
The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude
consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it
must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.
Man, like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process of adapting to the limitations of his environment.
But the principal
mechanism he has utilized for this purpose is unique among living
creatures. To forestall the inevitable historical cycles of
inadequate food supply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus members
of his own species by organized warfare.
Nevertheless, it exists and its social expression in war
constitutes a biological control of his relationship to his natural
environment that is peculiar to man alone.
An animal’s social response to
such a crisis may take the form of a mass migration, during which
the weak fall by the wayside. Or it may follow the dramatic and more
efficient pattern of lemming societies, in which the weaker members
voluntarily disperse, leaving available food supplies for the
stronger. In either case, the strong survive and the weak fall. In
human societies, those who fight and die in wars for survival are in
general its biologically stronger members. This is natural selection
The disproportionate loss of the biologically
stronger remains inherent in traditional warfare. It serves to
underscore the fact that survival of the species, rather than its
improvement, is the fundamental purpose of natural selection, if it
can be said to have a purpose, just as it is the basic premise of
Man’s ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of physical life suggests that the need for protection against cyclical famine may be nearly obsolete. 
It has thus tended to reduce the apparent importance of the basic ecological function of war, which is generally disregarded by peace theorists. Two aspects of it remain especially relevant, however. The first is obvious: current rates of population growth, compounded by environmental threat of chemical and other contaminants, may well bring about a new crisis of insufficiency.
If so, it is likely to be one of unprecedented
global magnitude, not merely regional or temporary. Conventional
methods of warfare would almost surely prove inadequate, in this
reduce the consuming population to a level consistent with
survival of the species.
Their application would bring to an end the
disproportionate destruction of the physically stronger members of
the species (the "warriors") in periods of war. Whether this
prospect of genetic gain would offset the unfavorable mutations
anticipated from postnuclear radioactivity we have not yet
determined. What gives the question a bearing on our study is the
possibility that the determination may yet have to be made.
Many diseases that were once fatal at preprocreational ages are now cured; the effect of this development is to perpetuate undesirable susceptibilities and mutations. It seems clear that a new quasi-eugenic function of war is now in process of formation that will have to be taken into account in any transition plan.
For the time being, the Department of Defense appears to have recognized such factors, as has been demonstrated by the planning under way by the Rand Corporation to cope with the breakdown in the ecological balance anticipated after a thermonuclear war.
The Department has
also begun to stockpile birds, for example, against the expected
proliferation of radiation-resistant insects, etc.
The declared order of values in modern societies gives a high place to the so-call "creative" activities, and an even higher one to those associated with the advance of scientific knowledge.
held social values can be translated into political equivalents,
which in turn may bear on the nature of a transition to peace. The
attitudes of those who hold these values must be taken into account
in the planning of the transition. The dependence, therefore, of
cultural and scientific achievement on the war system would be an
important consideration in a transition plan even if such
achievement had no inherently necessary social function.
The war in question may be national conflict, as in Shakespeare’s plays, Beethoven’s music, or Goya’s paintings, or it may be reflected in the form of religious, social, or moral struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, and Bach. Art that cannot be classified as war-oriented is usually described as "sterile," "decadent," and so on.
Application of the "war standard"
to works of art may often leave room for debate in individual cases,
but there is no question of its role as the fundamental determinant
of cultural values. Aesthetic and moral standards have a common
anthropological origin, in the exaltation of bravery, the
willingness to kill and risk death in tribal warfare.
For example, many artists and writers are now
beginning to express concern over the limited creative options they
envisage in the warless world they think, or hope, may be soon upon
us. They are currently preparing for this possibility by
unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms; their interest
in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract
pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the
Modern society places a
high value on "pure" science, but it is historically inescapable
that all the significant discoveries that have been made about the
natural world have been inspired by the real or imaginary military
necessities of their epochs. The consequences of the discoveries
have indeed gone far afield, but war has always provided the basic
has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and other
tropical parasitic diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this
work would otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous
nonmilitary importance to nearly half the world’s population.
We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary functions of war those we do not consider critical to a transition program. This is not to say they are unimportant, however, but only that they appear to present no special problems for the organization of a peace-oriented social system.
They include the following:
We have also foregone extended characterization of those functions we assume to be widely and explicitly recognized.
An obvious example is the role of war as controller of the quality and degree of unemployment. This is more than an economic and political subfunction; its sociological, cultural, and ecological aspects are also important, although often teleonomic. But none affect the general problem of substitution.
The same is true of certain other functions; those we have included are sufficient to define the scope of the problem.