Do We Really Want Peace?

As the flakes from the Geneva summit snow job start to settle, the emotional vapors clear away and historical perspectives once again rise to outline the future’s horizon.

History suggests rather strongly that neither this Geneva summit nor any other summit at any other place will end wars, hot or cold, to bring about a lasting peace. The fact is, hardly anybody who has ever really thought about it actually wants peace, though an awful lot of us sincerely believe we do.

Even a casual walk through history shows, and our deepest conditioning confirms, that war and the threat of war are the foundations upon which human societies have always been built. That’s what tribal markings and walled cities and stately flags and Air Force One are all about.

Unsettling as it is to think about, natural selection parallels history: the fighters, the scrappers, the belligerent (short of falling prey to fatal strategic miscalculations) are the societies that tend to firm up and remain stable, even to thrive.

Was the Roman Empire ever more stable than under the campaigning Caesars? And witness what happened to Alexander the Great’s, once it swallowed up or treatied into inaction its external enemies.

Our own society was born in war. Pressured from without, threatened, attacked, it was forced to jell and stabilize. Try to recall a major society that has survived and prospered for a century, let alone two, without war or constant threat of it. The Incas? Hawaii? Sure. But look at their internal organization--absolute totalitarian rulers, who were also held to be direct or indirect deities; human blood sacrifices. Who needs that? Look at us: Eight wars in 200 years.

What if the Soviets need us to threaten them into stability (like Fidel Castro does)? And more to the point, what if we need them even more, because we don’t push the police thing quite so vigorously? If this were true, that we need them, then we’d probably do odd things to benefit our sworn enemy. Things like selling them grain, and even making them loans to help them buy it and survive. Anything to prop up the sagging straw soldier.

But goodness! What would we ever do if peace really did break out? That, friend, would usher in the granddaddy revolution of them all.

JOSEPH HARTT

Englewood, Colo.