CONFLICT ESCALATION AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
[From Brian D'Agostino (951007.0700 EDT)
This responds to Bill Powers' "population measures; conflict and
war" (951005.0600 MDT). Bill wrote:
Going to war is not necessarily pathological; it may simply
represent the natural outcome of quite normal control systems
interacting under particular circumstances. . . . By my
defense, I may do something that you take as a threat. In
defending yourself against that disturbance, you may draw upon
resources that I perceive as giving you power not just to
insult me further, but to harm me, and I may start to draw
upon my own resources to improve my own defenses accordingly.
And of course you can see me doing that. Thus starting with a
casual remark, we may both end up armed to the teeth, and
eventually one of us will perceive that waiting for one more
round will create a fatal disadvantage, so it is necessary to
commit an overt act that will reduce the other's power: i.e.,
start a war. So a war can begin with both parties seeing
themselves as simply defending themselves against a
disturbance, and with nobody taking any voluntarily aggressive
action (in either party's view of himself).
Reply: After reading this--what you call "the basic PCT picture of
conflict and how it escalates"--I realized something for the first
time. This "PCT picture" is _exactly_ what political scientists
call "threat escalation," which is the foundation of "spiral
theory," one of the most widely accepted explanations of war in
mainstream political science. (See Robert Jervis, _Perception and
Misperception in International Politics_, pp. 62-78). I believe
this theory is essentially correct as far as it goes, but that it
is not a complete or adequate explanation. Before discussing the
limitations of this theory, however, let me draw your attention to
something.
The remarkable convergence you have demonstrated here between "PCT"
and a "mainstream" political science theory should alert us to the
hazards of generalizing about or stereotyping the "mainstream." If
PCT is a profoundly true approach to understanding human psychology
and behavior, then we should not be surprised if some intelligent
thinkers in other fields of knowledge independently discover it in
one form or another. Such "diamonds in the rough" often coexist in
the mainstream side by side with implicitly S-R thinking. For
example, the leading competitor to "spiral theory" in political
science is "deterrence theory," which is based on the premise that
the behavior of other countries can be "controlled" by negative
reinforcements, especially the threat and use of force. (See
Jervis, 58-62).
Your unique and indispensable contribution has been to articulate
in a formal, explicit, and highly coherent manner PCT _as such_,
while other thinkers have applied control theory implicitly,
intuitively, and unsystematically in various fields. I believe one
of the most constructive and important tasks for the CSG is to
identify these implicit applications of PCT, and to weigh in on the
side of the proto-PCT theorists in their debates with proto-
behaviorist colleagues, showing how an explicit understanding of
PCT clarifies the debate to the advantage of the former. Your
comments about PCT and conflict escalation encourage me to do this
with the spiral-deterrence debate in political science.
Let us now turn, however, to the limitations of this "spiral
theory" of conflict and war. Regarding this kind of explanation,
you wrote:
My point is that the control systems on both sides of the
conflict are operating perfectly normally -- there is nothing
pathological in either of them. What is pathogenic is the
particular combination of goals that results in direct
conflict . . .
Reply: I agree that it is not necessary to invoke psychopathology
to explain the dynamics of _a specific conflict or war_, but it is
a different matter with the more general phenomenon of war as an
institution, or the _war system_. In the context of such a system
--where conflicts between nations are ultimately settled by force--
the positive feedback dynamics you describe frequently take over
once control systems get locked into a conflictual interaction.
However, this model does not explain what maintains the war system
itself in the absence of specific conflicts. Under those
circumstances, the same positive feedback process should then work
in reverse. However, history is full of examples where such
disarmament initiatives began but were stymied by hawks who were
unwilling to relinquish military power, even in the absence of
external threats.
After World War I, for example, the world saw enhanced diplomatic
efforts to dismantle the war system culminating in the League of
Nations, the 1921 naval disarmament conference, and the 1929
Kellogg-Briand Pact. After World War II, we saw similar efforts
with the formation of the United Nations and global pledges of
"never again" and "saving future generations from the scourge of
war." After the Cold War and the collapse of the U.S.S.R., the
U.S. held the keys to world peace and the U.S. public clamored for
a "peace dividend." The spiral model predicts that under such
circumstances, country A's force reductions, by reducing the threat
posed to country B, should result in country B reducing _its_
forces and thus the threat it poses to country A, etc. The logic
of this process on a global basis should lead inexorably to general
and complete disarmament, and thus a state of affairs in which
_conflict_ could not lead to _war_ because all the potential
belligerants had beat their swords into plowshares.
The fact that this does not occur suggests that the majority of
policymakers in key countries such as the U.S. regard military
power as something more than a rational instrument of defense.
That is all I mean by "psychopathology" in this public policy
context. My data suggest that many if not most "hawks" are
unwilling to relinquish military power because for them it has a
positive symbolic value associated with maintaining their personal
machismo. This is clearly not an explanation of what motivates
_all_ hawks, but it is a step towards understanding why countries
are unwilling to relinquish military advantages regardless of
objective conditions of threat. I am willing to explore and test
other plausible explanations of militarism as well, if anyone wants
to suggest any.
Bill wrote: . . . one explanation for the selection of macho males
in policy-making positions could be that many women feel safer with
them in power. They want to know that if they feel a threat to
those whom they nurture, those in power are willing to take steps
to protect them. Of course I speak in stereotypes (or "ideal
types"), too, echoing the opposite stereotype just to show that the
picture is not completely unbalanced.
Reply: Yes, absolutely, and I didn't mean to exclude that kind of
explanation. This is something I will need to explore in my
interviews of female hawks. However, it should be noted that women
and children have the most to lose in an economic sense from
unnecessary war preparations, since tax revenues thus squandered
are not available for child care, housing, etc. This may be part
of the explanation for the small but statistically significant
"gender gap" in public opinion data, which show that 7% to 9% more
women than men are doves. Adding women voters to the picture
therefore only exacerbates the inability of the spiral model to
explain why disarmament fails to occur in the absence of specific
conflicts.
Bill wrote: Such time-bombs are more likely to go off when groups
are deciding on courses of action than when individuals are. Groups
are very much less intelligent than individuals. . . . Thus
governments march toward war for the simple reason that they can't
agree, internally, on any but the most simple-minded strategies:
someone is pushing, so we have to push back. Governments are
incapable of going up a level. Perhaps to solve the problem of war,
we need to be thinking about how to give them that ability.
Reply: Yes, absolutely, and this overlaps very much with C. G.
Jung's views about individuals vs. groups. As for giving
governments the ability to "go up a level," I would only add that
a small circle of key individuals including the president are
disproportionately influential in deciding government policy, and
they then use their special access to the media to shape public
opinion accordingly. The Council on Foreign Relations is a pretty
good cross section of this policy elite, and my data indicate that
hawks outnumber doves in the Council by a ratio of about 2 to 1.
If my theory is correct that hawks use military power to meet self
system needs, then one way of giving governments the ability to go
up a level is to build relevant psychotherapies into the support
systems surrounding policymakers. Since writing my article, I am
increasingly realizing that male hawks will never agree to this if
their group is singled out as uniquely in need of such
psychotherapy. I am therefore moving towards looking equally at
the psychopathologies of females as well as males, and doves as
well as hawks.
Best regards,
Brian