Why we fight - Book Review
"A Most Important Book on The Most Important Problem" Part I - The 5 logics that are the roots of war
Why do we Fight? by Christopher Blattman, whose blog I’ve long been lightly following. “The Roots of War, and the Paths to Peace”.
This book goes along well with classics like Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jarred Diamond. Three more recent are Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari (which my son read in Slovak), Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and, the best of these three The Goodness Paradox, by Richard Wrangham; this latter has almost all of the good stuff about Humans being kind, plus genetics & anthropology & culture, with lots of overlap of Sapiens. Plus a better genetic/ cultural explanation for why humans can also go to war. All are fine “Big Books”, about why humans are the way humans are, tho while there are explanations for behavior, there’s less additional clarity about the many more specific issues causing wars than I have been looking for.
So why DO we fight? Genetics and culture and … wait, most of the time we actually do NOT fight. Even when we live near folk we hate, we don’t fight them. The almost certain costs are too high, the highly uncertain outcome is very very likely to cost more than the gain, even if “we” win. Yet, obviously, history is full of wars. And Chris describes the Five key reasons for the breakdown of peace into war, each a Chapter:
2. Unchecked Interests
3. Intangible Incentives
4. Uncertainty
5. Commitment Problems
6. Misperceptions
The book was written before Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but very well describes, in detailed examples, mistakes that can lead to war – and it’s easy to claim Putin has made all of them, or been driven by them. It also describes why, in general tho and without direct reference, why Putin’s 2014 takeover of Donbas & Crimea did NOT lead to this level of fighting. In Chapter one, echoing his important intro:
1. Why We Don’t Fight
Very useful and methodologically important is the use of Pie charts – representing 100%, with each side claiming some amount, and the existence of some bargaining range. Or not. Chris illuminates his points with interesting, personal details, starting with visiting a gang leader on Chicago’s West Side. His intro chapter sections include details about:
Why Violence Matters, Why Rivals Prefer Peace, and the Five Reasons for War.
Important ideas, broken down into thoughtful chunks, usually with specific details, often further details expanding on a prior scene – so there a couple of mini-stories, and Chris tells stories well. Plus, he’s been there. In Chicago; in Medellin, Columbia with FARC fighters; in Greenville, Liberia some years after their 14 year civil war; in Kenya, in Iraq, in El Salvador, in Uganda. (There’s a love story in the background between Chris and his wife, and his wife’s work with ex-child soldiers of Uganda.)
There’s an unexpected example with George Washington, along with the recurring and recent examples of Saddam Hussein & Bush 43. As I think about the stories, the “good parts”, I’m reminded of The Princess Bride. The Germany loving pilot who damaged his eye but found “a way” to keep flying and shooting down Brits. To find out that Einstein was such a pacifist, he didn’t play chess.
The Trouble with Autocrats and Oligarchs, The Logic of Unchecked Private Interests at Work, Checks and Balances – with a very balanced view of America and George Washington, one of my heroes, and how the US Revolutionary War is consistent with the Five Reasons.
Many Big Humanity books include a note about fairness, often including studies of the Ultimatum game (two unknown players; one gets some cash, needs to split with the other; the other accepts the split or both get nothing. Below around 20-30%, the decider says no, so the splitter gets nothing.)
“We can find a desire for fairness, and willingness to punish for it, in every human society for simple reason: it helps us cooperate in large groups.”
“Scholars have noted he same motivations among participants of violence: outrage against injustice and unfairness, and a pleasure in exercising agency against a repressive regime or offending out-group.”
Chris says this message well, with details, and extends this now-common insight into how such intangibles raise the risk of war.
One thing his book is NOT about, is the difference between injustice (human caused) and unfairness (which reality & God often demonstrate, tho there are also human causes). I would claim a huge problem in the USA is the misperception of unfairness with injustice. What if my parents were not married, were low IQ, were smokers and drinkers and party-goers, were not good workers, did not have a good job that they would keep? That’s not fair to any child – but it’s not quite an injustice. There is no “justice” system to punish the parents or to compensate the unfairly situated child.
Another important book, The Mind Club, by Kurt Gray and the late Daniel M. Wegner, talks about minds, the ability to make decisions, and the ability to feel pain. And how in most situations the onlookers see a Victim and a Victimizer. And seldom are folks able to see the Victim as, at times, also a Victimizer. The Johnny Depp – Amber Heard divorce which so often intrudes on my social media shows both of them as Victims, and both of them as Victimizers. In the Ukraine war against evil Putin’s invasion, few seem able to see that while Ukraine is indeed a victim in this case, their corrupt oligarchs have been all too often the victimizers of the Ukrainian people – and “aid” to Ukraine is likely to add far more to a few oligarchs than to the mass of Ukrainians.
(On the Ultimatum game, https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/u/Ultimatum_game.htm
It seems that with higher amounts, the split is more often closer to 50%, in some study. My intuition is that college students would be accepting $10,000 as a 10% split with somebody else getting $90,000. ) Punishment for unjust treatment is in the book. (Also in all the Harry Potter books.)
This review is not all my notes and thoughts, so I’ll save those for part 2 or part 3. A great question from the intangibles is: “Do Humans Exult in Violence Itself?” He quotes a journalist who joined some football hooligans.
“There on the Streets of Fulham, I felt, as the group passed over its metaphorical cliff, that I had literally become weightless. I had abandoned gravity, was greater than it. I felt myself to be hovering above myself, capable of perceiving everything in slow motion and overwhelming detail. I realize later that I was a druggy high, in a state of adrenaline euphoria. And for the first time I am able to understand the words they use to describe it. That crowd violence was their drug.”
This is the type of added detail that elevates the book above one that is merely the author’s voice, tho Chris is clear on a summary of what rioters, soldiers, and gangsters say. “Some exult in the social aspect and bonding. Others see meaning in it. War is addictive, they write, violence brings exhilaration, purpose, and identity.”
I was in Rwanda around 2010, in April, when they have a week of Truth and Reconciliation about 1994 genocide. As I read Chris, I think of that genocide, and in a few pages Chris writes about them.
(Not the Khmer Rouge – no one book can be brief and also comprehensive.)
His chapter on uncertainty is fantastic. He’s back with the Chicago gangs, and how the ever-feuding gangs are predicting their strengths and weaknesses compared to the other gangs – and Chris notes how lousy even professional risk assessors are assessing risk.
Uncertainty is even more central and important to mistakes than Chris notes, but few scholars seem to know what to do with it, so they downplay it, when they can’t ignore it, as they most often do. Along with uncertainty comes deception. In my view, this is why life is so much more like poker than like chess. But this is also crucial for reputation, to influence the future.
The future, a big part of: “America versus Saddam Hussein”. Perhaps the best brief review of key decision making I’ve seen, including the uncertainty of America. None doubted US military superiority. “what was ambiguous was the US’s willingness to use it.” In 1991, they didn’t topple Saddam despite the Iraqi uprising; when 18 soldiers died in Somalia in 1993, the US left, and the US didn’t stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Tho the US did get NATO to intervene in Bosnia in 1995. “Saddam believed the US would bonb Baghdad but not march on it.”
My 16-year old son Patrick, as I was talking about this great book, asked if it included demographic change. Which is does, as part of the Commitment Problems. “The Great War” (WW I) as well as the Sparta – Athens war, both included Great Powers in fear of a Rising Power. “The Logic of the Commitment Problem in Action.” More Sparta – Athens pie charts, and expectations of changing power over time, are included to illustrate the logic. Seems very Ukraine relevant. “Mass Killings and Genocide”, then “Civil Wars”, and a repeated point “Reality Resists a Simple Narrative”.
The last of the Five Reasons, Misperceptions, goes thru so much good stuff so quickly, like “The Elements of Fast Thinking” and the biases. We’re egocentric, perhaps a subset of availability bias. We also have confirmation bias, and motivated reasoning as well as searching. These plus our general emotional state (he calls this affect), are features of our fast-thinking system. Which most often helps us altho it can lead us to war in misperceiving enemies and their intentions, or lack of them. “Misperceiving Ourselves: Overconfidence”, “Misperceiving Others: Misprojection and Misconstrual”, “How Groups Affect Our Bias”, and “Animosities on Automatic”.
Chris chooses many examples, and pretty much stays away from Trump, altho he reports that HR “Clinton’s supporters overestimated how much they’d dislike President Donald Trump’s inaugural speech in 2016. If you live in a society where you barely know anyone who votes for the opposite party, you’re familiar with these political cocoons.” There were also prior notes on US misperceptions like JFK’s Bay of Pigs, and “when American analysts and politicians grossly overestimated the quality of their sources on WEM and were far too optimistic about governing the country after the battles were won. Likewise, Saddam assured himself and his generals that the Americans would never put boots in Baghdad.”
I was wondering if he would quote the possibly wildly overquoted Rumsfeld about the “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns”. He doesn’t, but also doesn’t need to.
Chris boldly claims: “Every time someone gives you an explanation for a war, you should now think to yourself, ‘How does that hijack the incentives for peace? How does it fit in the five?’ It may not. There are lots of misleading ideas about war, ones that arise from focusing on the failures and tracing back conflicts to false causes.”
He notes that even with all five logics present, we’re not doomed to violence. It makes war more likely. It’s only a probability. And there are chance events, something that triggers the violence, but it’s the five logic fundamentals, far more than the chance event, that should be the focus for avoiding war, and instead remaining on a path of peace.
But that’s Part II, which I decided to read tomorrow and to write up review Part I tonight.