The paradox of the non-moral machine: Ingenuity, destruction, and the logic of modern warfare

“ There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war -- memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism; graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity. Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction; how the very spark that marks us as a species -- our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our tool-making, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will -- those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction.
How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth. ”

“ The evils of war do not cease with the awful loss of life and destruction of property which are their immediate results, since they form the excuse for inordinate increase of armaments—an increase which has been intensified by the application to war purposes of those mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries which, properly used, should bring peace and plenty to all, but which when seized upon by the spirit of militarism directly lead to enmity among nations and to the misery of the people. ”

“ Perhaps the greatest single step in the history of civil engineering was the introduction of iron as a primary structural material in the 19th century; it quickly released the bridge and the building from the confines of a technology based upon the limited strength of masonry and wood.
Wendel Bollman, self-taught Baltimore civil engineer, was the first to evolve a system of bridging in iron to be consistently used on an American railroad, becoming one of the pioneers who ushered in the modern period of structural engineering. ”

“ Is it nothing, good countrymen and esteemed fellow-craftsmen, that we have to boast of honours and achievements such as neither military daring, or statesmanlike craft or wisdom has ever attained, or can attain to. What are [18] all the doings of the science of war or government compared with the building up, on clear and well-defined principles, abstract as well as tangible, those stupendous and imperishable memorials of a country’s history which the works of the Architect and the Building Artificer supply. ”

“ Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction; arrogates the tremendous weapons of Deity itself, and tasks creation to assist him in murdering his brother worm!
In proportion as the art of war has increased in improvement has the art of preserving peace advanced in equal ratio; and as we have discovered, in this age of wonders and inventions, that proclamation is the most formidable engine of war, so have we discovered the no less ingenious mode of maintaining peace by perpetual negotiations. ”

“ My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand. ”

“ There is nothing either moral or immoral in the development and use or non-use of steam, electricity, plumbing, the tractor engine, automobiles and so on. They are mechanistic and non-moral. Thus we have developed architecture, machinery and the arts. It is true that in so far as man himself is concerned these are helpful to him in his mass phase and provide a larger freedom, which has resulted in a large experience, hence intelligence or comprehension in every direction. ”

“ There military gentlemen of limited outlook and high professional training will, in comparative security, achieve destruction beyond their understanding. The hard logic of war which gives victory always to the most energetic and destructive combatant, will turn warfare more and more from mere operations for [Pg 9] loot or conquest or predominance into operations for the conclusive destruction of the antagonists. A relentless thrust towards strenuousness is a characteristic of belligerent conditions. War is war, and vehemence is in its nature. You must hit always as hard as you can. ”

“ We have seen that the paramount purpose of all naval warfare, and, indeed, of all warfare, is the destruction of the armed forces of the enemy. His armed forces are in the last resort the sole instrument of his will, and their destruction to such an extent as is necessary to subdue his will is the sole agency by which peace can be restored. ”

“ Strategy, command, leadership, courage, discipline, supply, organisation, and all the moral and physical paraphernalia of war are as nothing to a high superiority of weapons; at most they go to form the 1 per cent. ”

“ This individual source of misery and suffering in war times is accompanied by a more direct one, that of the main purpose of war—destruction of human life and of property that might be utilized by an enemy, frequently of merciless brigandage and devastation. It is horrible to think of the frightful suffering caused by every great battle. ”

“ That which invests war, in spite of all the evils that attend it, with a certain moral grandeur, is the heroic self-sacrifice it elicits. With perhaps the single exception of the Church, it is the sphere in which mercenary motives have least sway, in which performance is least weighed and measured by strict obligation, in which a disinterested enthusiasm has most scope. A battle-field is the scene of deeds of self-sacrifice so transcendent, and at the same time so dramatic, that in spite of all its horrors and crimes, it awakens the most passionate moral enthusiasm. ”

“ Ruskin once said that 'War is the foundation of all high virtues and faculties of men.' As well might the maker of phrases say that fire is the builder of the forest, for only in the flame of destruction do we realize the warmth and strength that lie in the heart of oak. ”

“ But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; ”

“ Finally, there is a compelling moral argument against war in Iraq. Military force is justified only in self-defense; naked aggression is the province of dictators and rogue states. This is the danger of a new "preemptive first strike" doctrine. America is the most moral nation on earth, founded on moral principles, and we must apply moral principles when deciding to use military force. ”

“ Some argue—and on very good grounds, no doubt—that the more sharp and terrible warfare is made, the more speedily must it come to an end, and hence look with favor upon the means taken every day to render weapons more destructive and the soldier more cunning in his dangerous trade. ”

“ Meanwhile, the monstrous cost of a modern war, which impoverishes the nation and its posterity, the paralysis of a great and intricate system of world commerce and industrial international relations, the colossal destruction of wealth, the irreparable damage to progress and civilization, the impoverished physical heredity of a whole people, the affront to moral ideals slowly and painfully achieved, the untold burden of pain and woe and human suffering in desolated homes far from the field of battle, all combine to make war repulsive and repugnant to modern sense. ”

“ Since war now means, therefore, the destruction of the young, the strong and often the mentally superior, and the survival for reproduction of those whom war can not use, it has clearly lost whatever eugenic value it once possessed, becoming on the contrary a dangerous agent of deterioration. ”

“ Nor do the facts of the modern world lend any support to the theory that preparation for war under modern conditions tends to preserve virility, since those conditions involve an artificial barrack life, a highly mechanical training favorable to the destruction of initiative, and a mechanical uniformity and centralization tending to crush individuality, and to hasten the drift towards a centralized bureaucracy, already too great. ”

“ Victory in air war will lie with whichever side first gains the moral objective. If one side is so foolish as to waste time—more the supreme factor than ever before—in searching for the armed forces of the enemy, which are mobile and capable of concealment, then clearly the static civil centres of its own land will be paralysed first—and the issue will be decided long before the side which trusted in the “armed forces” objective has crossed the enemy’s frontiers. ”

“ But I am not writing a history of warfare, and need not describe these stages more closely, or examine the new sentiment of imperialist expansion which gave civilisations a fresh incentive to develop methods of warfare. The point of interest is to determine at what stage it might have been possible for the moral element to intervene and bid the warriors, in the name of humanity, lay down their arms; at what stage the tribunal which men had set up to adjudicate between the quarrels of individuals might have been enlarged so as to be capable of arbitrating on the quarrels of nations. ”

“ As names for explanatory forces they work havoc with intelligence.
An immense debt is due William James for the mere title of his essay: The Moral Equivalents of War. It reveals with a flash of light the true psychology. Clans, tribes, races, cities, empires, nations, states have made war. The argument that this fact proves an ineradicable belligerent instinct which makes war forever inevitable is much more respectable than many arguments about the immutability of this and that social tradition. ”