by
Kenneth E. Boulding
Of all the problems which beset the human race at the moment, unquestionably the most urgent is the breakdown of the classical system of national defense. By national defense as a world system I mean the arrangement by which certain national centers have been able to maintain a degree of internal peace and security by the process of the geographical segregation of violence. National defense, that is, is the system whereby a certain "heartland" can be preserved in relative peace, order, and security by the process of having wars somewhere else beyond the frontier. This system has served mankind with intermittent success for about 5000 years. It is in fact highly characteristic of that state of society which we might call civilization of which war, in an organized sense, has been a highly characteristic feature.
This period of history is now over. National defense is only possible as a world system under two conditions. (1) The nations must be far enough apart from each other, and each must suffer sufficient loss of power as it moves away from its home base so that each nation is stronger than any other at home. (2) Each nation must be able to dominate an area beyond its essential home territory equal to the range of the deadly missile. In the course of human history the range of the deadly missile has continually increased, and improvements in the cost of transport have in effect brought the nations closer together. These two forces have resulted in a continual increase in what I would call the "minimum viable size" of the nation. We are now rapidly approaching the point where the range of the deadly missile is 12,500 miles. This is the end of national defense as a system. The earth is simply not large enough for it. The nations cannot get far enough away from. each other. Unconditional viability, which is what national defense is supposed to give us, has disappeared.
This does not mean, however, that we must proceed immediately to an integrated world state. In the present condition of extreme human diversity and in the different stages of development in which the human race finds itself, a world state or even a loose world federation does not seem to be feasible even though it may ultimately be inevitable. It is possible, however, to have some kind of a world social contract without a formal world government, and this is the immediate task to which we should bend all our energies.
A contract implies a bargain, and what we face in the world today is a true bargaining situation. A bargaining situation is one in which them are a number of states of affairs, all of which are better for everybody than the state we are in now. There is a problem involved, however, in moving towards these superior states because we have to decide which one of these we want to move to. In a bargaining situation this decision is subject to the veto of any of the parties. This is why there has to be negotiation, and this is why a bargain can only be reached by agreement. This may be difficult because in spite of the fact that everyone would be better off in one of the superior states, the distribution of the gain is different in each of the superior states. In one of them party A may gain a little and party B may gain a lot. In another of them party A may gain a lot and B may only gain a little. There is a conflict of interests, therefore, in regard to which one of the superior states is selected. If this cannot be resolved, the parties will not be able to move to any of the superior states, and they will remain in the inferior position.
This is precisely the state of the world today. The present state is extremely dangerous and costly. It is not only that we are spending over $100 billion a year on armaments, which in itself diverts resources from economic development and other useful ends and condemns hundreds of millions of people in this and in future generations to misery. This very expenditure on armaments, however, gives us no security, and in fact increases our danger. This hundred billion or more is being spent to purchase a commodity, national security, which has in effect disappeared from the market. It cannot be bought at any price whatever. All we are buying is continually increased insecurity, especially for the civilian populations. Every year we are moving closer to the point of irretrievable disaster for the human race, and the more we put into armaments, the closer this point gets. It is clear that there are many states of affairs which are superior to what we have now. This, however, is precisely the difficulty. If there were only one state of affairs which was superior to what we have now we could all agree to go to it without any difficulty. It is the fact that there are many alternatives which creates the bargaining problem and makes the development of a world social contract difficult.
We can summarize some of these alternative superior states as follows:
(1) An arms control organization sufficient to prevent any expansion of the existing arms race and to check technological development in arms. This would freeze the existing situation and could also involve an organization to diminish the chances of an accidental war. This involves the building of some tenuous organizational ligaments between the presently disunited armed forces of the world. It would maintain the relative position of the United States and Russia vis-a-vis each other and also vis-a-vis the weaker and poorer countries. It may be that this is all we can get at the moment. The people who receive the least gain out of this arrangement, that is the weak and small nations, are precisely the ones whose voice is not likely to be heard at the bargaining table.
(2) Universal policed disarmament down to internal police levels. This is obviously a much better solution than (1). However, the total gain in this case will be distributed heavily toward the weak and the poor countries. The rich and powerful countries will suffer a marked loss of relative influence even though they will be richer than before. This means, however, that in order to achieve this solution the poor and weak countries will probably have to offer another bargaining counter in the form of a revised voting procedure in the United Nations with votes weighted according to some measure of size and importance of nations.
(3) The organizational union of the armed forces of the world under a limited world government set up by a constitutional convention. This position may seem hopelessly remote at the moment. As the realization spreads, however, that the armed forces of the world can no longer defend or protect civilian populations and that in their disunited state they constitute a grave menace to the security and even to the existence of the civilian population, a solution of this kind may become possible. We may indeed even grow towards it after position (1). It may also be that the shock of a non-fatal nuclear disaster might be sufficient to jolt mankind out of its present ideas into something more realistic in which this third alternative may rise on the political horizon.
(It) The weakest alternative which would still be better than what we have now would be a continuation and extension of the existing tacit agreements which now exist among the nuclear powers. We have for instance at the moment a tacit agreement not to conduct nuclear testing. We have a further tacit agreement of great importance to do nothing really effective about civil defense. At the moment the civilian populations of the nuclear powers are hostages, and this means that the chance of deliberate war is small. Our greatest danger is from accidental war. If the technical problem of survival under ground on a large scale can be solved, a nuclear war becomes almost inevitable, and the beautiful surface of this planet will be abandoned. This state of affairs is so much worse than what we have even now, that it seems to me that movements toward civil defense must be resisted at all costs.
The West, it seems to me, has not taken advantage of substantial moves toward a tacit social contract with the Russians, which are now open to it because of the Russian doctrine of peaceful coexistence. It is even possible to envisage a "disarmament race" which would not require any formal agreement at all. Indeed at the present state of the world, the more we can do with tacit agreements and unilateral action, the more likely we are to succeed. It is probable that we have thought too much in terms of formal agreements and have greatly neglected the alternatives which are open to us in tacit agreement. An intensive investigation of the opportunities and also the dangers of tacit agreement would seem to be an order of the day.
One cannot help contrasting the imaginativeness with which we approach bargaining situations in economic life with the extraordinary sterility and rigidity with which we approach similar situations in political and especially in the international sphere. The kind of system breakdown which we now face in international relations has many parallels in economic life. It is indeed highly characteristic of that state of the market which we describe as oligopoly or duopoly. In economic life, however, we have developed ingenious solutions to prevent price wars and unrestricted economic conflict ranging all the way from the gentlemen's agreement to the holding company. In labor relations also we have developed ingenious instruments of bargaining and negotiation. We still think of international relations, however, in terms of a system that has departed. If the national state is to survive, it must learn to develop ingenuity in bargaining. It can no longer survive as an autonomous defensible independent institution. We all have to learn to be dependent on one another. This is what bargaining means. We have to learn to live with what I call "conditional viability", that is, the kind of situation in which we all have the power to destroy each other, but we all refrain from using it.
There is hope, however, in the fact that this situation is not wholly unprecedented. It is unprecedented as between nations but not unprecedented as between individuals. The defense of the individual with the sword is strictly analogous to national defense. This is no doubt why writers on national defense are so fond of using the simile of the sword. With a sword an individual could dominate an area around him if he were a good swordsman equal to the length of another sword. With the coming of the crossbow, the rifle, and the revolver, however, unconditional security for the individual disappeared forever. This led fairly rapidly to personal disarmament. This happened, we should notice, not by an agreement to disarm. Indeed, the right to bear arms is a treasured privilege of the American Constitution. It happened through the sheer dynamics of this type of social system. It happened by tacit agreement and by "disarmament race". There may be an important lesson here for the nations. It may well be that in the present world of disarmament, even unilateral disarmament has high survival value. The meek, that is to say, will inherit the earth because the not-meek will kill each other off.
The United States, however, has a national mentality still appropriate to the era of the sword. We have not made the radical adjustments in our national image which are necessary for survival, and in consequence, there is a very great probability that we will not survive. However, it is still not too late to change. Even though the present system of defense leads, I believe, inevitably to disaster, it is still not too late to change the system. To this end all our efforts should directed.