War: What is it good for? Read online

  WAR

  WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

  IAN MORRIS is Willard Professor of Classics and a fellow of the Archaeology Centre at Stanford University. He has appeared on a number of television networks, including the History Network and PBS and has directed excavations in Greece and Italy. His first trade book Why the West Rules – For Now was published to critical acclaim and won a number of prizes including a PEN USA Literary Award. Morris’s second book The Measure of Civilisation, a companion volume to his first, was praised as a ‘treasure trove of information about social development’.

  ALSO BY IAN MORRIS

  Why the West Rules—for Now

  WAR

  WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

  THE ROLE OF CONFLICT

  IN CIVILISATION, FROM

  PRIMATES TO ROBOTS

  IAN MORRIS

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  PROFILE BOOKS LTD

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London ECIR 0JH

  www.profilebooks.com

  First published in the United States of America in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  Copyright © Ian Morris, 2014

  Maps copyright © 2014 by Michele Angel

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Hal Leonard Corporation for permission to reprint lyrics from “War,” written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, 1969, first recorded by Edwin Starr, 1970, released as a single by Gordy Records (Gordy 7101). Publisher: Stone Agate Music (from BMI Repertoire).

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978 1 84765 454 0

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction: Friend to the Undertaker

  1. The Wasteland? War and Peace in Ancient Rome

  2. Caging the Beast: The Productive Way of War

  3. The Barbarians Strike Back: The Counterproductive Way of War, A.D. 1–1415

  4. The Five Hundred Years’ War: Europe (Almost) Conquers the World, 1415–1914

  5. Storm of Steel: The War for Europe, 1914–1980s

  6. Red in Tooth and Claw: Why the Chimps of Gombe Went to War

  7. The Last Best Hope of Earth: American Empire, 1989–?

  Notes

  Further Reading

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Table 1

  Historian Niall Ferguson’s “menu” of forms of government (From Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire by Niall Ferguson, copyright © 2004 by Niall Ferguson. Used by permission of The Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Group [USA] LLC.)

  Figure 1.1

  Locations in the Roman Empire mentioned in Chapter 1

  Figure 1.2

  First-century A.D. German auxiliary soldier fighting for Rome (Landesmuseum Mainz, Mainz, Germany)

  Figure 1.3

  Barbarian auxiliaries presenting the Roman emperor with the heads of enemies killed in Dacia, 110s A.D. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 1.4

  Shipwrecks and lead pollution from the Mediterranean Basin, A.D. 1–900

  Figure 1.5

  Roman marines preparing to board an enemy ship, first century B.C. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 1.6

  Locations outside the Roman Empire mentioned in Chapter 1

  Figure 1.7

  Yanomami club fight, early 1970s (© Dr. Napoleon A. Chagnon, Yanomamo, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1997, p. 187)

  Figure 2.1

  Greek infantryman spearing a Persian, ca. 470 B.C. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 2.2

  Ancient empires, 250 B.C.–A.D. 300

  Figure 2.3

  The lucky latitudes

  Figure 2.4

  Sites of the original revolutions in military affairs, ca. 9500–500 B.C.

  Table 2.1

  Military and social developments, 10,000–1 B.C.

  Figure 2.5

  Fighting on a cave painting from Los Dogues, Spain, CA. 10,000–5000 B.C. (From Jean Guilane and Jean Zammit, The Origins of War: Violence in Prehistory, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, p. 105)

  Figure 2.6

  The Vulture Stele, carved ca. 2450 B.C. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 2.7

  Egypt’s pharaoh Ramses II in a chariot at the Battle of Kadesh, 1274 B.C. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 2.8

  The size of Eurasian empires, 3000 B.C.–A.D. 117

  Figure 2.9

  Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, and the twentieth century

  Figure 3.1

  Locations in western Eurasia mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.2

  Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.3

  Locations on the Eurasian steppes mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.4

  Equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Getty Images)

  Figure 3.5

  Roman troops burning Dacian villages as shown on the column of Marcus Aurelius (Alinari Archives–Anderson Archive, Florence)

  Figure 3.6

  The size of states in Eurasia’s lucky latitudes, A.D. 1–1400

  Figure 3.7

  The falling average size of states in Eurasia’s lucky latitudes, A.D. 1–1400

  Figure 3.8

  Christian and Muslim cavalry at the Battle of Damietta, 1218 (© Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)

  Figure 3.9

  Locations in East Asia and Oceania mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.10

  Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.11

  Locations in the Americas mentioned in Chapter 3

  Figure 3.12

  The orientation of the continents

  Figure 4.1

  Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 4

  Figure 4.2

  The world’s oldest true gun, from Manchuria, 1288 (© Yannick Trottier)

  Figure 4.3

  Locations in Europe mentioned in Chapter 4

  Figure 4.4

  Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 4

  Figure 4.5

  French and Portuguese galleons fighting off the coast of Brazil, probably in 1562 (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 4.6

  Count William Louis of Nassau’s letter to Maurice of Nassau explaining the principles of volleying, December 1594 (Koninklijke Huisarchief, The Hague, Netherlands)

  Figure 4.7

  Locations in the Americas mentioned in Chapter 4

  Figure 4.8

  Skull 25 from the Battle of Towton, 1461 (From Biological Anthropology, University of Bradford Biological Anthropology Research Centre, Towton Mass Grave Project)

  Figure 4.9

  The triangular trade routes of the Atlantic Ocean

  Figure 4.10

  Diverging wages in northwestern and southern Europe, 1500–1750

  Figure 4.11

  Spanish insurgents attacking French troops, May 2, 1808 (PhotoAISA, Barcelona)

  Figure 4.12

  Zulu prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande with his soldiers, 1879 (South W
ales Borderers’ Regimental Museum, Brecon, United Kingdom)

  Figure 4.13

  The extent of European empires, 1900

  Figure 4.14

  Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, the age of migrations, nineteenth-century colonies, and the nineteenth-century West

  Figure 4.15

  GDP per person per year, 1500–1913

  Figure 5.1

  Locations in Europe mentioned in Chapter 5

  Figure 5.2

  Industrial output per person in five major economies, 1750–1913

  Figure 5.3

  The size of five major economies, 1820–1913

  Figure 5.4

  Relative naval power of the eight biggest fleets, 1880–1914

  Figure 5.5

  Halford Mackinder’s map of the heartland, inner rim, and outer rim

  Figure 5.6

  German troops infiltrating through Pont-Arcy, May 27, 1918 (© Imperial War Museums [Q 55010])

  Figure 5.7

  British dead at Songueval, March 1918 (© Imperial War Museums [Q 42245])

  Figure 5.8

  The size of the world’s five largest economies, 1913–39

  Figure 5.9

  Locations in Asia mentioned in Chapter 5

  Figure 5.10

  Burned children in Shanghai’s bombed-out railway station, 1937 (Copyright © Corbis)

  Figure 5.11

  A German artilleryman at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943 (Getty Images)

  Figure 5.12

  The first Soviet atomic test, August 29, 1949 (Private collection of David Holloway)

  Figure 5.13

  Economic growth, 1943–83

  Figure 5.14

  The size of Soviet and American nuclear arsenals, 1945–83

  Figure 5.15

  U.S. 1st Air Cavalry Division, Binh Dinh Province, South Vietnam, January or February 1968 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

  Figure 6.1

  Locations in Africa mentioned in Chapter 6

  Figure 6.2

  Four chimpanzees charging a fifth at Arnhem Zoo, late 1970s (© Frans de Waal. From Chimpanzee Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.)

  Figure 6.3

  The Ngogo War, 1998–2009

  Figure 6.4

  Female bonobos engaged in genito-genital rubbing (Getty Images)

  Figure 6.5

  The divergence of great apes from our last shared ancestor

  Figure 6.6

  Plectroctena ants fighting, Tanzania (© Muhammad Mahdi Karim)

  Figure 6.7

  The ranges of chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and protohumans

  Figure 6.8

  Homo ergaster and Australopithecus afarensis skeletons

  Figure 6.9

  Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, the age of migrations, and the twentieth century

  Figure 6.10

  Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan (Copyright © Corbis)

  Figure 7.1

  Estimated rates of violent death for the Stone Age, ancient empires, the age of migrations, the twentieth century, and the early twenty-first century

  Figure 7.2

  Relative growth of GDP per person in different parts of the world, 1980–2010

  Figure 7.3

  Locations in Europe mentioned in Chapter 7

  Figure 7.4

  Locations in Africa and the Middle East mentioned in Chapter 7

  Figure 7.5

  Exercise at the U.S. Army National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, 2011 (Department of Defense photos)

  Figure 7.6

  The First Island Chain, East Asia

  Table 7.1

  Estimates of American, Chinese, and Indian economic growth, 2011–60

  Figure 7.7

  U.S. economy as a percentage of world GDP, 1950–2010

  Figure 7.8

  The arc of instability

  Figure 7.9

  NASA estimates of global warming, 1910–2010

  Figure 7.10

  Israeli Iron Dome antimissile missile at Tel Aviv, November 17, 2012 (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

  Figure 7.11

  Northrop Grumman X-47B robot fighter plane, 2013

  INTRODUCTION: FRIEND TO THE UNDERTAKER

  I was twenty-three when I almost died in battle.

  It was September 26, 1983, around 9:30 in the evening. I was hunched over a manual typewriter in a rented room in Cambridge, England, pounding out the first chapter of my PhD thesis in archaeology. I had just come back from four months of fieldwork in the Greek islands. My work was going well. I was in love. Life was good.

  I had no idea that two thousand miles away, Stanislav Petrov was deciding whether to kill me.

  Petrov was the deputy chief for combat algorithms at Serpukhov-15, the nerve center of the Soviet Union’s early-warning system. He was a methodical man, an engineer, a writer of computer code—and not, fortunately for me, a man given to panic. But when the siren went off a little after midnight (Moscow time), even Petrov leaped out of his chair. A red bulb blinked into life on the giant map of the Northern Hemisphere that filled one wall of the control room. It signaled that a missile had been launched from Montana.

  Above the map, red letters came to life, spelling out the worst word Petrov knew: “LAUNCH.”

  Computers checked and double-checked their data. Again the red lights flashed, this time with more certainty: “LAUNCH—HIGH RELIABILITY.”

  In a way, Petrov had been expecting this day to come. Six months earlier, Ronald Reagan had denounced Mother Russia as an evil empire. He had threatened that the Americans would build a space-based antimissile shield, ending the mutual balance of terror that had kept the peace for nearly forty years. And then he had announced that he would speed up the deployment of new missiles, able to hit Moscow with just a five-minute flight. Next, as if to mock the Soviet Union’s vulnerability, a South Korean airliner had strayed over Siberia, apparently lost. It took the Soviet air force several hours to find it, and then, as the plane was finally making its way back to neutral airspace, a fighter shot it down. Everyone on board died—including a U.S. congressman. Now, the screen was saying, the imperialists had taken the final step.

  And yet … Petrov knew that this was not what World War III should look like. An American first strike ought to involve a thousand Minute-man missiles roaring over the North Pole. It should mean an incoming inferno of fire and radiation, a frenzied, all-out effort to destroy the Soviet missiles as they sat in their silos, leaving Moscow with no way to respond. Launching a single missile was insane.

  Petrov’s job was to follow the rules, to run all the mandated tests for malfunctions, but there was no time for any of that. He had to decide whether the world was about to end.

  He picked up the phone. “I am reporting to you,” he said to the duty officer on the other end. He tried to sound matter-of-fact. “This is a false alarm.”

  The duty officer asked no questions, betrayed no anxiety. “Got it.”

  A moment later, the siren was turned off. Petrov’s staff began to relax. The technicians turned to their prescribed routines, systematically searching the circuits for errors. But then—

  “LAUNCH.”

  The red word was back. A second light appeared on the map; another missile was on its way.

  And then another bulb lit up. And another, and another, until the entire map seemed to be burning red. The algorithms that Petrov had helped to write now took over. For a moment, the panel above the map went dark. Then it flashed back into life with a new warning. It was announcing the apocalypse.

  “MISSILE ATTACK.”

  The Soviet Union’s biggest supercomputer automatically sent this message up the chain of command. Every second now counted. The aging, ailing Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was about to be asked to make the most important decision of all time. You may not be very interested
in war, Trotsky is supposed to have said, but war is very interested in you. Cambridge was—and still is—a sleepy university town, far from the seats of power. In 1983, though, it was ringed by air force bases, high on Moscow’s list of targets. If the Soviet General Staff had believed Petrov’s algorithms, I would have been dead within fifteen minutes, vaporized in a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun. King’s College and its choir, the cows grazing as punts drifted by, the scholars in their gowns passing the port at High Table—all would have been blasted into radioactive dust.

  If the Soviets had launched only the missiles that they were pointing at military targets (what strategists called a counterforce attack), and if the United States had responded in kind, I would have been one of roughly a hundred million people blown apart, burned up, and poisoned on the first day of the war. But that is probably not what would have happened. Just three months before Petrov’s moment of truth, the U.S. Strategic Concepts Development Center had run a war game to see how the opening stages of a nuclear exchange might go. They found that no player managed to draw the line at counterforce attacks. In every case, they escalated to countervalue attacks, firing on cities as well as silos. And when that happened, the first few days’ death toll rose to around half a billion, with fallout, starvation, and further fighting killing another half billion in the weeks and months that followed.