Lamaadar, Alia. (2004) War or Peace From Weapons Technology: Examining the Validity of Optomistic/Semi-Optimistic Technological Determinism. The McGill Journal of Political Studies. 2003/2004.

If I could invent a machine, a gun, which could by its rapidity of fire enable one man to do as much battle duty as ahundred, than it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battleand disease be greatly diminished. I thought over the subject and finally this idea took practical form in the invention ofthe Gatling Gun. (Dr. Richard Gatling in Edwards, 1962, 233)

In 1877 Dr. Richard Gatling invented a 250 shot per minute hand-cranked black powder machinegun. Not unlike Alfred Nobel, the creator of dynamite, or Dr. J Robert Oppenheimer, the scientistcredited for the atomic bomb, Gatling hoped that he was creating a weapon that might bringhumanity closer to peace. The theory of a weapon creating peace is not as paradoxical as it firstappears and theories that explain major social phenomena as a consequence of technology abound.In the cases of war and peace, these theories are referred to respectively as pessimistic and optimistictechnological determinism. Technological deterministic theories relating to the concepts of war andpeace are contentious. The dichotomy of arguments range from those theorists who believe thattechnology drives war, to those who believe that the same forces have the potential to create peace.Immediately following the 1945 detonations of nuclear devices in the context of war, arguments insupport of a technology capable of creating peace proliferated in tandem with these weapons.

However, many of these theorists unwilling to embrace the polarized belief that technologydetermines global pacific tendencies, have adopted a more moderate stance. This view, herein referredto as semi-optimistic technological determinism, concludes that new technologies such as informationwarfare and precision weaponry are creating more peaceful wars; wars with less collateral damage,and more humane doctrines. When Gatling designed his machine gun he was quoted as saying that,“the inventor of such a machine would prove a greater benefactor of his race, than he who shouldendow a thousand hospitals” (Edwards, 1962, 233). Ironically, more than a century later MichaelSmith, commenting on the tremendous ways in which this gun had shaped the nature of war, insteadreferred to it as “the first weapon of mass destruction” (Smith, 2003, 108).

Those theorists who view weapons as catalysts for peace or, by the same token, as mitigations tothe atrocities of war, often ignore the symptomatic effects of technology: those qualities which insteadserve to confound the possibilities of peace. While stopping short of pessimistic determinism, thispaper hopes to disseminate the numerous ways in which technology, specifically military weaponsand their supporting systems, impede peace and compel wars. These products of technology includearms races, unpredictable enemy responses to technology, and human disengagement from war. Eachof these symptoms serve to denounce the idea that weapons alone have the ability to create peaceor more peaceful wars. Closer examinations of these forms of technological determinism reveal thatthey may, in fact, undermine more fruitful endeavors for peace.

Theories of Optimistic Technological Determinism

Supporters of optimistic technological determinism have grown exponentially in the decadesfollowing August of 1945, marking the American use of nuclear devices in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Since this time these supporters have fallen into two distinct categories. The first group, were thosetheorists whose beliefs were shaped by the dramatic recency of the events surrounding World War II.These individuals held the myopic belief that nuclear weapons represented the infamous pinnacle ofmilitary achievement—an unfair weapon of war and the denouement of modern weapons evolution.Nuclear weaponry was thus considered too heinous to ever be used again and too destructive tobe bested by any future technology, leaving peace as the only conclusion. The position of thesecond group, is described by the “father of the atomic bomb” Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer as, “twoscorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life” (Garnett,1999, 36), and is often referred to as ‘Mutual Deterrence Theory’.

The conjecture that nuclear weapons represent the fulfillment of mankind’s age-old prophesy ofa weapon so terrible and unfair that it deters war (Roland, 1997), is preceded by a long line oftechnological ancestors. In reality, “every historical period seems to have had its share of unfairweapons…usually the objection brought against these weapons was that they caused ‘unnecessary’suffering” (van Creveld,1989, 71). Historically the most common reason for a weapon to remainunused in Western civilizations was that it enabled their users to kill from a distance and frombehind cover, thus obscuring the vital distinction between acts of war and simple murder. Earlyexamples of this include the crossbow, red hot cannon balls, and explosives dropped from balloons(ibid). The latter was argued to be too dreadful for use because it killed both soldiers and civiliansindiscriminately. Similarly, nuclear weapons allow for both distance from a target and indiscriminatedamages to soldiers and civilians. The deaths of an estimated 100,000 in Hiroshima and 35,000 inNagasaki (The Manhattan Engineer District, 1946), as well as the immeasurable number of peopleinjured and the damages incurred, testified to the seemingly unsurpassable destructiveness of atomicweapons. This consequently justified beliefs that a human fear and repulsion of this technologyshould result in a dead-end for weapon evolution and war.

We human animals have built-in fear reactions […] These reactions help us to protect ourselves [...] Fear can betransmuted into constructive planning and policies […] Through fear, ordinary people can be motivated to pursueconstructive means for sustaining peace, or at least for limiting the scope of violence. Similarly, in exchanges betweenworld leaders on behalf of preventing large-scale conflict, a tinge of fear—sometimes more than a tinge—enable each tofeel the potential bloodshed and suffering that would result from failure (Lifton, 2001, 26).

To those theorists immersed in the searing recency of atomic war, no worse scenario or weaponcould be imagined and therefore peace became an inevitability driven by the moral fear of society’sown capabilities. This hope for peace was obliterated in November of 1952, when the first hydrogenbomb vaporized the Pacific island of Elugelab, a mile in diameter. Its power was equal to 10.4 milliontons of high explosive, or about 700 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima(Broad, 2001). It became apparent that weapons development had not only continued, but hadsucceeded in creating a weapon with the potential for destruction far surpassing that of the atomicbomb.

Confronted with the failure of their peaceful prophesy to be realized, many theorists abandonedthe hope of weapons creating peace. Oppenheimer who had originally led the Manhattan Project atLos Alamos in the hope for peace, later reversed his opinion and contested the production of theH-bomb for the reason that “mankind would be far better off not to have a demonstration of the

feasibility of such a weapon” (Wolverton, 2002, 41). While faith in the notion of a technology soatrocious that it morally necessitates peace has largely been abandoned, the realist presumption ofmutual deterrence continues to thrive.

As a theory of technological determinism, mutual deterrence is based on a historical trend inconjunction with the realist supposition of actor rationality. Ruth Sivard documents this historicaltrend in her analysis of military history, World Military and Social Expenditures. Sivard comparesglobal war casualties throughout the past five centuries and comes to the conclusion that with theinvention of gunpowder, worldwide deaths in warfare quadrupled from an estimated 1.5 millionduring the sixteenth century to 6.2 million during the seventeenth. Compounding these figureswas the occurrence of the industrial revolution which skyrocketed worldwide deaths in war to 20million until midway through the twentieth century (Sivard, 1996). At this juncture Sivard observesa noticeable deviation to the trend; more than 84 percent of the casualties from war in the twentiethcentury occurred before 1950. The explanation for this trend, asserts Alex Roland and otheroptimistic technological determinists, is purely to the credit of technology.

Had there been conventional war in the second half of the twentieth century on the scale seen in the first half, we couldhave expected more war deaths than occurred throughout recorded history up to the twentieth century. Extrapolatingfrom Sivard’s figures, we can reasonably project that another world war […] could have killed 250 million people […]these people lived because of nuclear weapons (Roland, 1995, 68).

This argument stems from the realist conviction that due to the unprecedented power of atomicand hydrogen bombs, there can be no effective defense against them. Thus, the only rationaluse of these weapons by a nation would be for the purpose of deterrence and preventing war, aposition often referred to as ‘mutually assured destruction’ or ‘the balance of terror’. These theoriessolidified and found momentum during the Cold War, as tensions between the United States andthe Soviet Union resulted in a substantial nuclear armament on both sides. Mutual deterrence wasnot a relationship that either the US or the soviets actively sought, rather it developed as a paranoidresponse to each developing a powerful nuclear arsenal. However, once it existed strategists andstatesmen began to appreciate some of its virtues. Churchill expressed the sentiment that “it may wellbe that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety willbe the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation” (Garnett, 1999, 36). Andso these prophesies of technological determinism have been self-fulfilling and decades after the ColdWar has ended, states continue to rely on nuclear weapons to ensure their security.

Aside from failing to account for Murphy’s Law of probability, which posits that in any givensystem, if something can go wrong, it will, theories of optimistic technological determinism fail in amore significant way, demonstrated dramatically by Dr. Alex Roland:

Now the cold war is over. What it has wrought may finally be viewed without the passions bred by fear. The greatbloodletting engendered by the industrial revolution has peaked. We need to acknowledge this blessing and preserve therelative peace that it has brought—even if the price of that peace is to live in apprehension, even dread, of our owncapabilities for destruction. (Roland, 1995, 69)

This statement inadvertently begs a question of tantamount importance to the theory of optimistictechnological determinism: By what criteria does it evaluate the condition of ‘peace’? If evaluatedas meaning the absence of war, certainly wars have continued to be fought in forms including,but not limited to the Falkland War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf Wars, and the war in Bosnia.Roland categorizes these tragedies as “localized conflicts with relatively limited casualties,” but itis unacceptable to marginalize the loss of life and social implications of such conflicts. The onlyrelatively convincing argument that can be made in favor of technology at this point in human history,though it has been less than sixty years since Hiroshima, is that there have been fewer large-scaleconventional wars and a decrease in their subsequent casualties. In turn, this argument can no longerbe reasonably described as optimistic technological determinism and is more appropriately referredto as semi-optimistic technological determinism.

Theories of Semi-Optimistic Technological Determinism

On a spectrum of hard and soft determinists, the semi-optimists lie somewhere in the middle-range.While these theorists do not hold that technology and military weapons have the ability to createpeace, they do ascribe to notions of ‘cleaner’ and more peaceful wars as a result of technologicaladvancements. Just as atomic warfare spawned a new generation of optimistic technologicaldeterminists, the advent of information warfare and precision guided munitions has renewed theoriesof semi-optimistic technological determinism. More than 2500 years ago the Chinese strategist andphilosopher of war, Sun Tzu, embraced an approach to warfare based on the principals of superiorintelligence, deception, and knowledge of the mind of one’s enemy (Henry, 1998, 123). While Tzumay have penned these principals thousands of years before the invention of the microchip, theyare remarkably similar to the tactics of ‘information warfare’. Definitions of this term vary, but forthe purposes of this paper an intentionally expansive definition has been adopted. Thus, informationwarfare is described as “activities by a state or non-state actor to exploit the content or processing ofinformation to its advantage in time of peace, crisis, or war, and to deny potential or actual foes theability to exploit the same means against itself” (Toffler, 1993, passim). Thus Tzu’s goal of winningwars in the imaginary system of the mind, is parallel to information warfare’s goal of triumphingwithin information systems.

Current theorists therefore promise more bloodless wars fought in cyber-spaces, as well asprecision weapons directed at the enemy’s decisive points at critical moments through informationsuperiority, thus accruing far less collateral damage.

The accuracy of PGMs [precision guided munitions] promises to give us a very different age, perhaps a more humaneone. It is odd to speak favorably about the moral character of a weapon, but the image of a Tomahawk missile slammingprecisely into its target when contrasted with the strategic bombardments of World War II does in fact contain a deepmoral message and meaning. War may well be a ubiquitous part of the human condition, but war’s permanence doesnot necessarily mean that the slaughters of the 20th century are permanent (Friedman, 1996, xi).

Unlike optimistic technological determinism these views do not contend that technology will inany way result in peace, instead they recognize the intrinsic challenges to peace in the internationalsystem and instead hope to lessen the destruction of inevitable conflict. In this sense, these theories

attempt to present a more realistic portrayal of technology while not abandoning optimism. Howevera more thorough critique of the effects of weapons technology, reveals that although semi-optimistictechnological determinism may have its basis in the ideal of a more peaceful international system, asa military doctrine it has the potential to impede the possibility of peace. There are no less than threedevices by which technology may undermine the possibility of peace by compelling the reality of war.Well documented examples of arms races throughout history have demonstrated several means bywhich these processes gain their own momentum, thus increasing the likelihood that states will goto war. Additionally when states find themselves in direct technological competition with an enemythere is an increased likelihood of unpredictable and provocative enemy responses. Finally, the verynature of new technology and its focus on distance from the enemy results in a social disengagementfrom war conducive to further conflict.

Technological Momentum in Arms Races

The development of weapons technology has become an intrinsic component of Western militarydoctrine. General John Shalikashvili, former Chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, declaredthat his 1996 directive, Joint Vision 2010, provides “an operationally based template for how America’sarmed forces will channel the vitality and innovation of our people and leverage technologicalopportunities to achieve new levels of effectiveness in joint war fighting” (Dunlap, 1999, 25). Thusmore ‘effective’ war fighting technologies take shape in the form of such novelties as informationwarfare and PGMs. The level to which technological development has become ingrained as strategyand has become self-propagating in the form of arms races, is idiomatically referred to as the‘Frankenstein drive’. Robert McNamara has pointedly defined this autonomous impulse as having“a kind of intrinsic mad momentum of its own” (Thee, 1981, 102). Most of the arms races before1945 were primarily quantitative races and although the previous two centuries were marked bytremendous qualitative innovation, the life cycles of these weapon systems was considerably longerthan those after 1945 (Senghass, 1979, 120). The traditional, and even intuitive, explanation for armsraces asserts that “particular armament measures of one side are directly geared to the armamentmeasures of the opponent” (Senghass,1979, 120), however the reality of arms races is much moredisconcerting. Instead it is often internal technological forces which drive arms races. The impulse totechnological competition stems from the very size, expansion and goal setting of military researchand development. Unlike any time period before it, modern warfare invades all scientific disciplinesand environments—land, sea, deep-sea, space, jungles, desserts, and even cyber-environments—apervasiveness which dictates that hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers working onparallel problems, should be competing among themselves in the invention, development andperfection of new arms and weapon systems (Thee, 1981, 102). The internal arms race is furthersustained through the selective allocation of funds granted to military research and development, aswell as the structured rivalry between the different military services (army, navy, and air force) andvarious independent laboratories. These mechanisms ensure sustained internal competition whichdictates optimum weapons efficiency, dramatic results, an immutable drive to continue and the fuelfor other nations to rationalize their own internal competition. The dangers of this system were firstgiven name by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell Presidential address:

This conjuncture of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State House, every office of the FederalGovernment […] We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, bythe military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist (Thee,1981, 106).

The threats to peace of this so-called ‘military industrial complex’ are numerous. Midway throughthe Cold War, military research and development was absorbing the talents of an estimated half amillion scientists around the globe, and military expenditures on technology and its developmentcontinued in the name of security and deterrence (ibid). Empirical evidence suggests that theconsequence of this trend is that conflicts marked by a military build up, more frequently go to war(Sample, 1998). Eisenhower again elaborated on this dilemma in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those whohunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It isspending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children (Shuckman, 1996, 233).

The greater the amount of finite resources dedicated to military technology, the greater the desireof the nation to justify their use. Thus, regardless of the nature of these technologies, be they ‘morehumane’ or not, their development will necessitate their use, a fact made all to clear by the eventsof 1945. “In this way of looking at things the form of the technology does not matter. If you havea cornucopia in your grasp you do not worry about its shape. Insofar as it is a powerful thing, morepower to it” (Winner, 1986, 45). Arms races have nevertheless been justified as the means by whichmore civilized weapons are created. Precision engagement for example is touted by Joint Ventures 2010as a means to “lessen risk to [US] forces, and [to] minimize collateral damage.” However, the enemy’sinterpretation of these weapons may well prove to be very different.

The Unpredictability of an Adversary’s Response to High-Tech Attack

Peaceful crisis management requires that each side maintain an accurate perception of the other’sintentions and military capabilities (Cimbala, 1999, 121). Even ignoring the role of technology, thisbecomes difficult in times of crisis due to the effects, not the least of which are psychological, of acompetitive relationship and a threat-intensive environment. The complexity of and mutual ignorancesurrounding new forms of high technology further aggravate this situation. As previously indicated,PGMs are considered by semi-optimistic determinists as the key to more humane warfare, howeverthe notion of a ‘humane’ bomb may fail to be appreciated by the adversary that it is used against. Inthe ensuing period the enemy’s response may be unpredictable and aggressive, especially for thosenations for whom high-tech weaponry is simply not economically feasible. Such nations may come tobelieve that nuclear weapons provide the best answer to the challenge posed by conventionally armedPGMs. Historically, Russian generals in particular have feared that in a general war Western nationsmight use these munitions to degrade Russian strategic forces. As a result Russian generals haveindicated that Russia “should enjoy the right to consider the first use of [enemy] precision weaponsas the beginning of unrestricted nuclear war against it”(Dunlap, 1999, 27). This statement indicates

another danger of high technology in war, namely that it may unintentionally lower the thresholdof conflict. By providing the capability to employ coercion though means of non-lethal and low-lethal technologies such as information warfare and PGMs, an unpredicted response of a target tosuch actions, may lower the threshold of conflict. There is no clear definition of what constitutes“aggression” in information warfare, and what would therefore represent a breech of internationallaw. Current UN Charters traditionally interpret “aggression” in the context of armed conflict andwould therefore seem to allow peacetime data manipulations. Of course an adversary, not sharing thisview, may react violently, thus initiating the cycle of violent escalation. (Bond, 1996, passim)

Further, the possibly problematic co-mingling of military and civilian high-tech facilities and theinfusion of civilians into formerly military positions, is a trend principally motivated by a desire toconserve defense expenditures. The ever-increasing sophistication of the technologies of war requirethe military to obtain external civilian expertise. This is reflected by 1997 US Department of Defensefigures which estimate that 70 percent of their information technology transactions were beingsourced to civilian vendors (Silverberg, 1997, 38). The increased military reliance on civilians presentsan additional argument against technology as a means for more peaceful armed conflict. It has longbeen recognized that new technology which requires substantial civilian inputs has the unintendedconsequence of clouding that principal which is vital to laws of armed conflict: “the requirement todistinguish between combatants who could be legitimately attacked and, non combatants who couldnot” (Dunlap, 1999, 27). An unintended enemy reaction to high technology could be the assertionthat civilians involved in this capacity are justified victims of war either in the context of offensivestrikes or possibly as human shields. “Several potential US adversaries appear prepared to usenon combatants to blunt the power of high-tech weaponry…when Western military action seemedimminent, Saddam Hussein covered his palaces…with non-combatant civilians in order to discouragePGM attacks by Western Forces (Slavin, 1997, 13A). The argument that PGMs will limit collateraldamage, subsequently resulting in less bloody wars is a very simplistic and unrealistic portrayal of thistechnology. After all, precision has one meaning when applied to the field and quite another whenapplied to heavily populated urban areas.

Social Disengagement from War

“If disengaged from war’s harsh realities, a society can more easily indulge in the fiction of aclean war” (Shurtleff, 2002, 108). The term disengagement, in this context is attributable to AlbertBorgmann’s device paradigm (1984, 40-48). It is the process by which technology transforms “things”into “devices” by splitting the means and the ends. In that transformation, machines begin to providethe means, and the ends thus adopt the role of a commodity (Shurtleff, 2002, 101). Stated lessphilosophically, the process of disengagement from war occurs when machines begin to be viewedas the devices by which peace is created. As a result, the notion of peace becomes commodifiedand subsequently quantifiable. The theory of semi-optimistic determinism demonstrates the effects ofdisengagement by its belief in technologies that may create more peaceful wars. Disengagement is notmerely a byproduct of weapons development -- often it is the exact point. Disengagement, especiallyin the form of distancing, has the effect of making war safer for one’s own soldiers. Thus munitionswhich can be launched from a distance, and information warfare which is usually conducted withoutever leaving the safety of one’s own soils, protects soldiers. However this distancing comes at a very

high price. “That is to say, as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrorsof war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on the screen, there is a very real danger oflosing the deterrence that such horrors provide” (ibid). The deterrence referred to here is not a sociallyconstructed one like ‘mutually assured destruction’, rather it is the innate human aversion to killinganother human being. This aversion is best demonstrated by trigger pull studies taken from varioushistorical armed conflicts. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, an army psychologist contends thatin earlier wars a large number of soldiers were not firing at the enemy. “Grossman tells of musketsrecovered during the US Civil War which were filled with layers of ‘buck and ball,’ suggesting thatsoldiers may have wanted to pretend to shoot, and so kept loading but faked firing” (ibid). As a meansto combat this human aversion, the military forces have developed techniques of dehumanizing theenemy and weapons that distance the soldier from his victim.

Disengagement has become more pervasive as history has progressed, especially when comparedto Greek warfare as depicted in Homer’s the Iliad: “And he pitched Pisander . . . onto earth/ Andplunged a spear in his chest—the man crashed on his back/ As Hippolochus lept away, but him hekilled on the ground,/ Slashing off his arms with a sword, lopping off his head/ And he sent himrolling through the carnage like a log (Homer, 87). This comparison of hand to hand mortal combat,versus that of ‘push-button wars’ make it plain to see that as the military adopts a semi-optimisticapproach to technological determinism, it is increasingly disengaged by technology; as such the mostpowerful deterrent to war is being lost. Even, Clausewitz was eager to emphasize that “war is notwaged against an abstract enemy, but against a real one” (von Clausewitz, 1976, 161).

Conclusions

“I am tired and sick of War. Its Glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neverfired a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for blood, morevengeance, more desolation. War is Hell!” (Sherman, 1879). Weapons by definition inflict harm,and are the appendages of war. The notion of weapons development for peace belies and evensabotages fruitful endeavors for peace by fueling the instigators of conflict. Of even greater concernis the disengagement bred by technology, for while weapons harm, disengagement allows. By nomeans does this paper wish to convey a sentiment of pessimistic technological determinism, assertingthat technology definitively results in war. Rather the aim is to elicit a more paced and consideredinterpretation of technology's role in this complex social phenomenon. A comprehensive literaturereview of technological determinism finds a noticeable repetition of the phrase “without anybodychoosing it,” in reference to the effects of arms races, mutual deterrence, the centralization of systems,and qualitative weapons development to name a few. The most frightening aspect of technologicaldeterminism is the corrosion of hindsight and impotence it engenders. From Clausewitz derives theadage that, “no other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance [as war]”(von Clausewitz, 1976, 83). The variability of conflict ensures that no theories of determinismwill ever completely elucidate the processes of war and peace. Instead, it is necessary to assert controlover the scientific and social phenomenon that contribute to aggression and bloodshed. The creatorof the hydrogen bomb once stated, “what we should have learned is that the world is small, thatpeace is important, and that cooperation in science…[can] contribute to peace” (Wolverton, 2002). Thisnotion of science and technology as a means of cooperation rather than competition holds promise.

As weapons technology has served to confound peace, other malignant forms of technology haveserved to destroy global health and the environment, both of which must now be internationallyrepaired. If goals could be found by which technology and science could become mutually assuredbenefits to all nation states, cooperation might compel peace; ‘peace’ that is more appealing than thetype bread by mutually assured destruction.

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