After a fantastic part 1 on The Roots of War, my expectations were too high for the Paths to Peace, part 2. It’s very honest – No Magic Bullet, no One True Path. But lots of true critiques about what might sound good but doesn’t work, and many things that do help. He quotes Reagan: “Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”
Chris focused on 5 main war roots (part 1 review):
Unchecked Interests; Intangible Incentives; Uncertainty; Commitment Problems; Misperceptions
And then focusses on 4 more winding paths toward peace:
Interdependence – economic and other connections.
Checks and Balances – reducing single sources of power.
Rules and Enforcement – the law, the state, courts. [I call “Real Law” the rules that are enforced.]
Interventions – a toolbox of responses to those cases when violence does occur.
Wayward Paths to War and Peace - ideas that sound good, but data doesn’t back them up
Peacemeal Engineer - conclusion on advice to all do-gooders based on decades of experience, plus what the whole book is about. Small steps; step by step w/ feedback
Economic Interdependence
Possibly the biggest peace promoter. All peaceful, voluntary trade is win-win, and that makes war, relative to peace, more of a lose-lose. This hugely increases the cost of fighting. It’s so clear to libertarians and free market oriented folk, that what is well shown is the presentation of how it increases the bargaining range between conflicting groups, some calling this the “capitalist peace.”
Tho, while “war is bad for business”, if your business is making guns or weapons, war might actually be good for your business. Like most real solutions, there are trade-offs and other issues.
There’s also Socially Interlinked as a section, and Morally and Culturally Interlinked. One note involves how multi-ethnic African countries have times where groups trust each other more – when their national soccer team wins. After wins, but not losses, they identify more nationally than ethnically. There is also the Rights Revolution, or Humanitarian Revolution, which has “extended the bounds of sympathy to include the interests of the other, and thus made fighting even less acceptable than before.
Checks and Balance
A Stable Society has Many Centers, which reduce and check the “unchecked interest” reason of authoritarian leaders for war. Three branches of gov’t: executive, legislative, and judicial. But also local and regional authorities, with the power to tax and spend. Plus other orgs – polycentric.
Polycentric Peace – even in Communist Party China, “Power is widely spread through [the large Party], powerful bosses, influential firms, and many level of regional and local government.
The Path to a More Checked Society
“Some people find it dispiriting o think that checks and balances come slowly and through struggle”. But this also means lots of opportunities. “Little changes matter”.
“Unfortunately, so much of the international aid and diplomatic system is a force for centralization, not polycentrism. That makes the world a little less stable.”
Rules and Enforcement
“A state is just one example of an institution that controls violence. Like all institutions, its effectiveness comes from setting rules and enforcing them”.
I’ve long been arguing for a “Real Law” – rules that are enforced. Whether written or informal, borders of behavior that are enforced are the real law. Much more de facto than de jure.
The Great Pacifier: The State.
Yes, Hobbes (naturally), without a state Leviathan, life is “nasty brutish and short”. Less violence with “the system of clear rules, predictable punishments, courts to adjudicate disputes, and public services that make crime or violence less attractive.” But, very importantly, “Apeceful society does not have to be equal or just.”
Anarchy and Self-Enforcing Institutions
“Why develop a custom of violent reprisal? Because it’s a powerful deterrent.” This supports, without noting it, the game theory strategy Tit for Tat, the Evolution of Cooperation. Chris makes good arguments that NATO and other international orgs are more than merely the sum of their national parts – tho only a little bit. This to effectively argue against John Mearsheimer’s also strong claim it was merely the power of the states involved.
Chris discusses the growing “vast system of global law … [which has] shifted norms throughout the world … that should make peaceful bargains more likely”. YES. The best we can do is make peaceful bargains more likely. No Magic Bullet.
“None of this enforcement works especially well. It doesn’t fully constrain nations, especially the most powerful”. See Russia taking the Ossetia part of Georgia, or Crimea and Donbas from Ukraine – far more than US attempted nation building by force in Afghanistan.
Interventions
Very interesting notes about the effective, and profane, John Prendergast, who had advised Clinton after his acceptance of genocide in Rwanda, but after gov’t returned to found Enough, https://enoughproject.org/about and then its investigative partner The Sentry, http://enoughproject.org/about/the-sentry
War is a Wicked Problem (no template, many roots, measuring success is hard, many actors need coordination, each case is unique)
Good news – there are approaches, interventions, that work, mostly “because they make compromises easier to find”. BUT, bad news – “they’re great in theory, wobbly in evidence, hard to get right, and seldom an unabashed success.”
Here’s the list: Punishing; Enforcing; Facilitating; Incentivizing; Socializing.
“You should be hopeful about peacemaking for the same reasons you value preventive medicine and drugs, even if these measures are less effective for the chronically ill. They keep most of us in good shape and help us recover when sick.”
Punishing
Many bad governments have been hijacked by a clique of self-serving elites, willing “to use whatever means necessary –purges, land grabs, civil war, genocide—to seize more of the pie.” Prendergast started following the money and helping Western banks stop much of the money laundering.
A problem with general economic sanctions is that it “takes a bit toll on innocent people” – and often leaves the country poorer BUT the dictator even more powerful.
[rare bias- “American states are fighting over voting restrictions” – No. They are fighting over Voting ID laws to reduce fraud. This note made playing video games more attractive than finishing this review for some 3 weeks. It’s so sad then a writer and thinker I respect, stoops to an easy partisan view. Either we have some restrictions on voting, or entering the USA, or we don’t. The idea that we do have laws, but they’re not enforced or, in the case of Dem opposition to Voter ID, the enforcement is made so difficult so as to equal non-enforcement, we cease to have real law.]
Punishment for bad behavior of sometimes bad guys, is nothing new – it is “to change their incentives and keep them from offending in the first place.”
Judging sanctions as a policy is hard – we can’t count the bodies of people NOT killed when the threat of sanctions successfully deters a ruler from invading.
Chris probably doesn’t apply this general rule to judging Trump & Obama & Biden, but I will:
Trump supporters can point to the terrible cost of Ukrainian & Russian lives, as well as destroyed wealth, and note that during all 4 years of Trump, Putin did NOT invade. Under Dem Obama, Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, then again in 2022, with Dem Biden, Putin invaded all of Ukraine.
As he does say, to counter the selection bias of judging sanctions only when tried, “We also want to account for the moments when, anticipating a punishment, a dictator decided not to purge his enemies…” This is true in general about police and all enforcement orgs.
A key, realistic but not so inspiring message is that “nothing works” as well as we want, but it is possible to achieve “modest improvement on the margin”. Which we should all support. Including the flawed UN peacekeepers who, by virtue of being nearby and “authority”, can more quickly stop or reduce deadly riots that still so often occur; “peacekeepers help entrench peace… make terrible situations a little better.”
Facilitating – helping rivals talk to each other, including “being able to meet in secret.”
Socializing – decide on appropriate behavior, listen to your enemy, control your anger and impulses. Not too different from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Big program trial, STYL:
Sustainable Transformation of Youth in Liberia. Assaults & criminality reduced by a half. 10 years later, the STYL graduates remained half as likely to commit crimes or violence.
Similar to the Chicago program BAM – Becoming A Man.
While not advocating universal CBT, it’s noted that “Self-control is a habit. So is looking ahead to the future.”
Incentivizing – “What about carrots—big explicit ones … aid, jobs, renown, or other rewards to leaders who keep the peace” Chris describes the frequent trade-off between peace and justice – unjustly increasing inequality of rich so as to avoid war. Anti-corruption policies are noble, but can lead to more short term violence. Still, “making deals with warlords is the darker but necessary side of peace.”
Wayward Paths to War and Peace
Many have partially true intuitions about war: “that men are more likely to wage it, that the poor are more likely to rise up, or that sometimes war can be good for society.” Partially true, but mostly not.
Put the Women in Charge? – nope.
To Avert Conflict, End Poverty? – not quite: “times of falling [export] prices made wars longer and more intense, but not more likely to break out. Droughts in Africa showed the same pattern.”
Other Wayward Roots of War: exploding population of youths – not much real link in the data.
Hardened Ethnic Identities--but most ethnic groups don’t fight.
Climate Change -- small group violence increases on hot days, but doesn’t explain more war.
Let Them Fight It Out – When one side wins decisively, the chance a conflict breaks out again in the future seem to be much lower. And other various good points war, which seem valid BUT “it ignores the people who suffer, die, and don’t enjoy the fruit of the decisive victory.” It’s really not worth it.
The Peacemeal Engineer
What to do??? “The right response is not a huge leap. … The true path to peace is different. It’s winding, often hard to find, full of obstacles.” From Karl Popper “The piecemeal engineer knows, like Socrates, how little he knows.”
Chris concludes with 10 rules for folk like him, international do-gooders, taking small steps and seeing what works.
His concluding chapter should be read by all who want, as I do, a world at peace – where conflicts are handled, and often resolved, peacefully.