Unspeakable Or Unthinkable Part 2: An Amoral Calculus

     As my Gentle Readers might have expected, I received quite a lot of feedback on the previous piece. I wasn’t surprised by the tone of it. Disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised.

     The mass warfare of World War II, in which many thousands of noncombatants died, should have taught us something. The atomic bombings, in particular, were a critical moral message that nearly no one seems to have absorbed. The blindness men have exhibited toward that lesson is depressing…especially as it’s all too easy to adopt that blindness for oneself in a spirit of “This is the way things are and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

     I studied strategic planning – that’s the peculiar science of how to plan for the possible use of one’s armies and arsenal in a notional war – for more than twenty years. I kept at it until I was certain there was no way for a layman to understand it any more deeply nor more fully. I didn’t do so because I thought it unimportant. Neither did I do so because it was the supreme goal of my life to master that horrifying field. In a world hagridden by States, an increasing number of which possess weapons of mass destruction, understanding the criteria by which they maneuver against one another, whether diplomatically or militarily, is crucial to understanding States themselves: the core of the madness that afflicts suffering Mankind.

     It’s vital to understand one’s enemy. Our enemy is the State. (Kudos to the shade of Albert Jay Nock.) Weapons planning is the essence of the craft of Statesmanship.

     Statesmanship is the institutionalization of evil.

     Give that a moment before continuing on.

     The calculus of warfare demands certain things from those who conduct it. There is no morality in it; there are gains and losses, and nothing else. The balance sheet of war often confounds the layman with its callousness. Yet that is inherent in the enterprise, for those who order men to war have only the will to win as their guide.

     The progression of warfare from prehistory to the present has been one of steadily increasing scale and brutality. Time was, men fought with their fists, and perhaps with clubs. Later there came swords and spears, and then the first weapon that acts at a distance: the bow. More time passed; the discovery of explosive combustion and how to manage it brought us the musket and the cannon. Small arms became ever more accurate and capable, and that was far from the terminus of the progression.

     Soon the very first weapon of mass destruction arrived: the machine gun. Cannons grew steadily larger; their projectiles became more deadly, capable of slaughtering men in bunches far away. Over time, warfare, which had once been confined to land surfaces, reached the seas, and then the air.

     Armies grew ever larger, too. Time was, a war would involve only a few hundred or thousand men. The wars of the Twentieth Century compelled millions into combat.

     The German Empire introduced the first true area-of-effect weapon: poison gas. While the Germans eventually decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, the central idea persisted. Fire, more controllable by far than phosgene, became the tactical area-denial method of choice.

     What originated as a tactical device soon became a strategic ploy. Analysts discovered that a sufficiently concentrated bombing campaign could ignite a firestorm capable of devouring a whole city. Their test bed was the city of Dresden. The tactic proved even more devastating than they had expected.

     And then came The Bomb.

     Men who wield power over others don’t readily think of those others as their equals. As difficult as that is in peacetime (i.e., “A state of tension falling short of armed conflict” – Keith Laumer) it’s utterly impossible in wartime. Human bodies become tools to be hurled at the enemy. Weapon systems are evaluated on how efficiently they can destroy others’ lives and property. In general, bigger, faster, and cheaper are treated as synonyms for better.

     For a while after the arrival of The Bomb, even power-mongers were sufficiently horrified by its power to focus on how to arrange matters so as not to use it. A unique military leader, Dwight D. Eisenhower, became a notable political leader. He made it his central aim to preserve the peace, using The Bomb as its ultimate guarantor. Yet his intention was never to bomb anyone; rather the reverse.

     But more time passed, and the science of weaponry advanced further. Weapons of mass destruction ramified in ways their original developers could not have envisioned. Tactical nuclear weapons; artillery shells that contain small nukes; even a man-portable launching system for small nukes. Naval surface vessels were equipped with nuclear depth charges; submarines were developed that can launch ICBMs and IRBMs. (At one time there was a proposal for the development of nuclear land and sea mines, though I can’t say with assurance whether that went anywhere.)

     Each of these became a component in the arsenals of the Great Powers. That none of them have been used as yet is a mighty blessing. It’s odds-on that the first time one of them is used, all the others will be dispatched shortly afterward.

     Weapons science has advanced relentlessly in the direction governments, not private citizens, find congenial: the direction applicable to warfare between States. Private citizens have no use for weapons of mass destruction, Mike Nesmith’s notions notwithstanding. We prefer weapons we can use to defend ourselves and our loved ones without igniting a firestorm.

     But the men who “govern” the world cannot resist the lure of the really big gun. If it exists – if it’s even theoretically possible – they want one. Or many. Usually as many as they can squeeze funds from their subjects to pay for. The usual reasoning, which has proved resistant to refutation, revolves around “balance of power.”

     Today the Earth is partitioned into States. Antarctica and a handful of barren islands excepted, there’s no land surface not under the jurisdiction of some government. Over time, the dynamic of power has caused States to develop into ever more ruthless and rapacious entities. Warfare, the province of governments, has become a constant fact in the lives of Earth’s billions. No one anywhere can be certain that it will never come to his door.

     Some time ago, I wrote:

     The States of Earth exist in an anarchic relation to one another. Each has its own regional code of law, which might differ markedly from all the others. Despite several thrusts at the matter over the centuries, there is no “super-State” to enforce a uniform code of law over them all. More, they view one another as competitors in many different areas; their populations and institutions are often in sharp economic competition with one another. Thus, they are often at odds. They resolve important disputes among them through negotiation or warfare.

     That is what governments – States – do. They exist to wield power over private persons, and to contest for increases in power with other States. While they sometimes negotiate with one another, the shadow of warfare lies over every negotiation: the final “offer” that can only be answered by its like. Their calculus does not admit of the constraints of absolute morality.

     The rulers of Earth’s States have grown ever less concerned with anything but their own power and prestige. Nothing else can adequately explain the wars of the century behind us. Those rulers’ decisions are encompassed by the wholly amoral, win-or-lose calculus of warfare.

     How about a Bible quote? Everyone loves Bible quotes: some to laugh at their naivety, the rest of us to be humbled and exalted by them.

     Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
     But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.
     And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
     And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

     [1 Samuel 8:4-18]

     Samuel understood. He grasped the logic of power better than his Hebrew brethren – and better, dare I say it, than the great pullulating majority of my countrymen.

     My point “should” be “obvious” by now, but then, I thought that to be the case when I wrote the previous essay:

• For as long as we tolerate, or are forced to endure, the existence or States, there will be warfare; there are no Organians who can or will restrain them.
• War and the possibility of war will overshadow every decision of any sort made by any ruler or ruling cadre.
• The calculus of war is unconcerned with morality as men understand and respect it. It is entirely “practical” – from the point of view of the rulers.
• Thus, in any situation where the use of a weapon of mass destruction – e.g., an atomic or nuclear weapon – appears to the rulers to be the most practical available course, they will use one.
• Moreover, they will continue to develop such weapons, for “if he has one, I have to have one too.”

     President Harry Truman gave the order that resulted in the A-Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the calculus of war, worked out under the circumstances that prevailed at that time, made it the most “practical” way forward. Today, that decision appears to have been the best available. In that regard, Tucker Carlson was wrong. But in this regard – i.e., the position that the killing of innocents is morally wrong and cannot be redeemed by any “practical” consideration – he was correct, even if he failed to address such non-nuclear slaughters as Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Bataan, the Holocaust, et alii.

     And for as long as we demand – or must suffer – States over us, that antinomy will persist.

     May God forgive us.