«Our prehistoric past was extremely violent, more violent than under states»
– First, let us discuss several important ideas from your fundamental study on war in human civilization. For a long time—dating back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau—there has been a belief that wars are a consequence of the emergence of states and civilizations. In other words, war is thought to have occupied only a small fraction of human history on Earth. Is this true? How safe was the prehistoric period of human existence?
– Classically, we had two positions. One, as you said, identified with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the middle of the 18th century: the state of nature was the state of peace and bliss and everything. But a century previously there was the position associated with Thomas Hobbes which suggested that the state of nature, in the absence of governments that would impose peace, was very violent. What we also know now is the time span, because now we know what Hobbes and Rousseau did not know: that agriculture only began some 10,000 years ago in the most advanced of the earliest societies. It took millennia to spread. States first appeared 5,000 years ago; in some places, they only emerged (in the Scandinavian countries, for example) 1,000 years ago, whereas our species, homo sapiens, is hundreds of thousands years old. Thus, about 95% of our history as a species was spent as hunter-gatherers in the so-called state of nature. The question of whether it was peaceful or belligerent is a very crucial one. For many years, for centuries, it could not be resolved, because archaeology is unable to give us an answer, for reasons that we will not get into now (mainly because weapons are also hunting tools, so we do not know if they were used only for hunting). Modern hunter-gatherers are already in contact with agriculture and states, so perhaps this has changed their behavior. So it was very difficult, and only over the past few decades or so (after the 20th century that was mostly Rousseauite, that is, believed that the nature was good—the pinnacle was in the 1960s, the return to nature, all of that) it has become clear that our prehistoric past was extremely violent, more violent than under states. The percentage of men that lost their lives violently was probably around 25%, both from conflicts with other tribes and from conflicts within the tribe. All the rest of the men were covered with scars. Perhaps 15% of the population found violent death. Therefore, on that account at least Hobbes was more correct than Rousseau.
«The reason why women and food are so much sought in competition is because the evolutionary logic rests on them»
– You write about a range of evolutionarily conditioned factors that drive people to engage in warfare. What are these factors?
– The view presented by Rousseau, which sounds extremely plausible, is that before agriculture, people had little to fight over. There was no property—accumulated property—apart from the things that people carried with them, which was practically nothing. The population was very sparse and dispersed over large territory. What was there to fight over? It sounds very reasonable, but he was wrong. He was wrong—and we know this not only from humans but also from animals across nature—because the main resource in competition was the hunting territories, animals to hunt. They are very rapidly depleted. If you hunt them, they become scarce in the territory. That is why you do not want competitors to enter your territory and hunt them. For this reason, lions and other predators would fight other predatory animals that enter their territory. This is one thing. Secondly, there are territories which are richer in wildlife. For example, on river estuaries or on rivers, in contrast to arid environments, game, that is, animals for hunting, is in abundance, so you want to be there rather than be pushed out. Hunting is very crucial. And it is throughout nature, this source of intense competition, not only with humans.
There are other things that might be at play here in terms of resources: for example, water in arid environments. In Ukraine, you do not lack water, but in my part of the world water is scarce, and in the deserts it is even scarcer. For instance, in the mid-Australian desert, which is a very difficult environment, tribes fought over access to water holes, which in times of drought meant the difference between life and death. People were prepared to risk their lives in order to defend the only thing that kept them alive. This is one thing: resources, mostly meat, and in some environments water and other things. The other thing people always fought over—this may come as a surprise—is women. This applied to within the tribe and between tribes. The reason why women and food are so much sought in competition is because the evolutionary logic rests on them. That is, you need to have food in order to survive, and you need to have females in order to reproduce. If you are not ready to fight for them and you are left without them, you leave no traces in the next generation. And the genes that are preferred—sexual desire and so forth—are selected by evolution. So, this is on base level.
– Which factors of a non-evolutionary, but rather cultural, economic, and political origin contribute to the outbreak of wars?
– They are not separate. For example, rivalry over leadership. Why do people want status and leadership? Because those who have it get better access both to resources and to more and more attractive women. The rich in most historical societies had many wives. Even today, if you are rich, even if you marry only one at a time, you may have access to more women and more attractive women. It is all ingrained in us. Economic aspect is certainly the same, that is, economic as in beyond subsistent goods (the goods you need to survive in terms of food and other things): if you are wealthy, if you have a lot of property, you become, for example, more attractive to women. All these things are connected; they grow over. They grow from our basic desires that have been shaped by evolution over many thousands of years, many thousands of generations.
«In the wealthiest parts of the world that have over $20,000 production per capita… there is no longer war between states»
– How old is genocide as a phenomenon that has often accompanied wars? Why have different political regimes so frequently resorted to this form of violence?
– They have always been with us. The preferred method of fighting among hunter-gatherer tribes, way before agriculture, was the night raid. They would raid the camp of the other tribe, kill all the men while they are asleep or just awakening and unable to defend themselves, and take the females, rape them, take them in marriage etc. Genocide was there already, and it was also there during civilization, as an extreme measure. Usually, you wanted to subjugate other societies so that they work for you, pay taxes to you. But if they revolted, mass deportation and genocide were always means that empires used in order to impose their rule if necessary. Also between states, they can annihilate the other. For instance, Rome destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War. There were many such examples. If there was a mortal enemy that you could get rid of, destroy the city, kill the inhabitants or sell them into slavery, or in any case thereby destroy this entity, this was quite common.
– Are humans capable of controlling evolutionarily conditioned impulses toward war, as well as the cultural and political factors that give rise to it? What would this require? You argue that the origins of this capacity to overcome war should be sought in modern Switzerland rather than in prehistoric times. Why is that?
– First of all, it is not that violence is inevitable. It was never inevitable. There are three main forms of human interaction. One is cooperation. People cooperate extensively. We developed language, evolutionarily, in order to be able to cooperate. Another mode of interaction is nonviolent competition, and people also often engage in that. The third mode of interaction is violence. That is, violent competition, conflict. We are very good at each of them. We are evolutionarily equipped to engage in all three, and we choose and combine according to the circumstances. In circumstances that favor peaceful cooperation we cooperate. It is very much a matter of conditions, and conditions change in history and between cultures and within cultures, so it depends. What I am suggesting is that over the past two centuries there has been a change, and the change is associated with the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, we were all locked in the trap described by the British demographer Thomas Malthus in the late 18th century. He said that whatever the increase in wealth, in productivity, it is taken up by a growing population. Humanity is always on the verge of starvation (and easily falls below starvation if there is some disaster) because there are always more people. Whatever more wealth there is, it only creates more people, because then more women get pregnant and more children survive to adulthood as there are more resources. We are always locked in this existence. Until the Industrial Revolution, wealth was what is known as a zero-sum game: I can only take from you, whether “you” is somebody in my society or my neighbor across the border. In order to increase my share, I need to take from you.
All of this changed with the Industrial Revolution, because we have an exponential rise in wealth per capita. The wealthiest societies in the 1800s, for example the United States, Britain or Holland, had the equivalent of $2,000 production per capita. We are now 35 or up to 50 more than that in the most developed parts of the world. This meant a great decrease in the occurrence of war. Obviously, we had two world wars in the middle. I will not discuss why, but all in all there is a great decrease. In the wealthiest parts of the world that have over $20,000 production per capita (North America, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand) there is no longer war between states and there are no longer civil wars either. Both war between states and civil war have entirely disappeared within that part of the world. All the wars we now have are in the less developed parts of the world. The war in Ukraine, that is, the invasion by Russia, is much explained by that. Russia has no productive sector at all. It lives off the export of raw materials, as we all know; therefore, it has nothing to offer the countries around it, including those previously included in the Soviet Union or in the Soviet bloc. The only thing that it has in order to influence them is to coerce them by force. This is what took place first of all with Chechnya and then with Georgia, and then with Ukraine.
«United States fights wars, but even with Trump, it does not fight wars with other developed countries»
– What is happening in the world today? How would you explain the renewed surge of large-scale violence and military tensions?
– I think that people confuse two things here. On the one hand, the United States fights wars all the time, right? But what they miss is that the world, as I said, is divided into two separate spheres. One sphere, the affluent part of the world, is a zone of peace. United States fights wars, but even with Trump, it does not fight wars with other developed countries. We have this empty talk about Canada, which was never going to lead anywhere, and we had this more alarming talk about Greenland, which also was not going to develop into anything. There are no wars. Why does Holland, for example, not fear a German or a French invasion? This goes against all of historical experience, and still it does not fear it at all, it does not expect it. Why do Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, even though they do not love each other because of Japan’s colonial past, not think at all about the possibility of war between them, or between them and any other developed country (while fearing China and North Korea)? The fact that Australia and New Zealand do not fight each other sounds so obvious to us that we do not even stop to ask why. So, within the developed world, there are no longer wars between states. There are no longer civil wars either. That is the zone of peace. And then we have the zone of war. The zone of war is where production per capita is lower, and so these are the most volatile parts of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, my own Middle East, the countries around China, the countries around Russia, South Asia—around India—and Southeast Asia. This is the zone of war where wars still occur, both wars between states and civil wars. Also, the fear of war is still there even if there is no war. It is not like Holland not preparing for a German invasion. They know that war might come, so they need to take precautions. This is how the world is divided today. Both China and Russia are great powers, even though production in them is still far below that of a developed country. Obviously, there is a great difference between China and Russia. China is an economic giant, but still its production per capita is 13,000 USD. We will have to wait and see what happens when it becomes really affluent and really developed. It is an open question. Perhaps it is the most important question of the 21st century. Yet, since they are both superpowers, the risk of war around them is significant.
– How might Russian-Ukrainian war shape global relationships? What impact should we expect from it?
– That is very difficult to tell. We are seeing such big changes in the world condition today. The situation in the world today reminds us of the first half of the 20th century, whether you want to talk about 1914 or the 1930s. There is a very strong challenge to the liberal world order: obviously above all from China and Russia, but we see to our surprise that it comes also from the United States, in the sense that it is no longer willing to stand behind the liberal world order which it supported throughout since 1945. Things do not look good. It is like watching a train crash in slow motion. We can only hope that the worst scenarios that can emerge from this will not materialize. But it is anybody’s guess where it is going to go, apart from saying that developments are very alarming. Prediction is very difficult.
– Henry Kissinger once wrote that the First World War was not inevitable. Are we capable of averting the wars of the future that now seem to be approaching?
– In principle, first, if I were the president of the United States, I would have continued to support the liberal world order. Now, this means that the countries of the European Union should take their share, which they have not done since 1945. So here the American request is undeniable. But I would have continued to support Ukraine. And I would have done whatever can be done in order to prevent China from taking over both Taiwan and the South China Sea, short of war. And then in the long run, as you implied, development in parts of the world that are still backward, such as South Africa, south of the Sahara, the Middle East, and South Asia, like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Once they embark on the road to modernization, the likelihood is that, as the experience shows, this would reduce belligerence. But this is a long road, and in the meantime, anything may happen both around Russia and around China.
«From the beginning of statehood, war obviously was part of the mechanism through which nations were created»
– In partnership with Alexander Yakobson, you wrote a study on the emergence and development of nations. In this book, you offer a critique of modernist theories of the nation. What are your main critical arguments? What role do wars play in the formation and consolidation of nations?
– They do play a role undoubtedly, always have played a role. War was one of the means by which territories were unified, mostly by bullet. But what I am showing is that there was a difference. If you unified a space which was occupied by a particular ethnos, by a particular ethnic identity—people that spoke a similar language, shared a similar culture more or less—this was the nucleus of nation states, and this came very early. For example, the first state ever was Ancient Egypt, emerging some 5,000 years ago, around the year 3000 BC. Egypt was a nation state in the sense that Egyptians were an ethnos. They spoke the same language, very similar dialects that could be understood by everybody. Once they were unified, the state would obviously continue to unify the realm, centralize religious cults and other things that would unify the realm. Then Egypt expanded beyond its borders. It was always clear what was Egypt per se and what was the Egyptian empire outside of Egypt, in the same way that people knew very well where Britain was and where the British Empire was, and they did not confuse the two. In some way the same applies to Russia. There was the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Empire. It very much rested on the Russian people, and [then] there were all the others within the empire, some of them regarded as closer to the Russians, to the Great Russians, so that is the peoples in Belarus and Ukraine and so forth (even though relations were complicated). And some of them were regarded as parts of the empire without sharing this Slavic affinity with the Great Russians. From the beginning of statehood, war obviously was part of the mechanism through which nations were created. Once they were created, they reinforced the process of nation building within them by a process of acculturation within the realm.
«Ukraine’s resilience, its resistance surprised everybody»
– Regarding the Russian Empire, this is very interesting, because there is an opinion that there were never clear borders between the Russian Empire and the territories that were conquered. A lot of scholars who study the topic write that the British empire had clear geographical borders, obviously, but with the continental empires, there is also this challenge.
And regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, the current war, what significance might this war hold for the Ukrainian nation and nation building? How do you see it?
– Obviously Ukraine’s resilience, its resistance surprised everybody, surprised the Russians and surprised everybody else. It is very admirable, the tenacity that the nation has demonstrated. It is also very clear to many familiar with the history of the region that now there is a huge rift created between Ukraine and Russia. Russians always regarded Ukraine and Belarus as the little brothers. There was this kind of family relation between them. Like all families, it was always complex, complicated. But now there is a huge rift between the two countries and between the two peoples, which might also be one of the legacies of this war. We will see how things develop. Obviously, the war has galvanized, reinforced the sense of Ukrainian identity, Ukrainian nationhood. Beyond that, you probably know much more than I do.
«In many cases the national church was the guardian of the national tradition»
– As we see from your previous answer regarding the Egyptian state, you consider nations as very ancient formations and criticize the so-called modernist theories?
– Modernists, during the 20th century, argued that nationalism was something new, that it only emerged in modernity, some say because of the printing press, now that people shared a world created by the book and by the newspaper. They read the same things and were in communication through the medium of the print, of the printing press. This is called imagined communities, in the sense that people imagine this in their minds: they imagine a community that is larger than their local village. Other modernists think that nationalism began with the French Revolution and the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Still others suggest that it only began with industrialization, which brought people from the villages in which they lived isolated into the cities, creating the so-called mass society where people met each other in the cities, serving together in armies of conscripts, going through a school system which taught them the history of their nation and so on. So, they all thought that this was a modern invention.
What I am arguing is that all the processes described by modernists are correct and had a great influence. All these processes made modern nationalism all the more entrenched. But it is a mistake to think that it is something new. People first coalesced around tribes and then around the other kin. I call this “kin-culture communities”, that is, people who felt that they belonged to a large family and shared the same or similar culture. People were loyal to this. Think, for example, about Jeanne d’Arc in France. She was a peasant girl, and still she knew that the English were foreign invaders into France and must leave. How did she know if she was a peasant girl? The answer is that the peasantry, which was 90% of the population, did not know how to read and write, but they were read to and preached to. They went to church every Sunday, and in the church, the priest told them about these facts, or what was presented as facts, for good reasons: the people and nation are being threatened.
For example, Christianity is a kind of universal faith. We know it is divided: Protestants, Catholics, the Eastern Church and all that. But even within each of these there has always been a national church, and in many cases the national church was the guardian of the national tradition and the national spirit. They could not be separated. They were never separate. Even in countries like Greece or Serbia that were conquered by the Ottomans for centuries, the most powerful institution that safeguarded the Greek identity, apart from language, was the national church.
Those who present religion as a kind of opposite force to nationalism miss the point. The opposite was the case. The proof of this is that when there was, as I said, a foreign invasion, for example, when Napoleon invaded Russia—Russia was the most backward country in Europe, its population of peasants, perhaps 90%, totally subjugated to the aristocracy—the czarist regime called upon the people of Russia to rise in arms and defend the motherland. Napoleon came with the gospel of liberation. He would liberate the serfs, right? But still, they revolted against the invader, which shows that they did have a very strong national identity. When the Soviet Union was invaded by Germany, Stalin did not approach the peoples of the Soviet Union in the name of communist ideas. He called upon mostly the people of Russia, of Great Russia, to defend the motherland. Things, as we know, are more complicated in Ukraine and in the Baltic countries, which had reasons not to like the Soviet regime. It is not that the processes that the modernists described are not true, but they are far from being the entire picture. The entire picture was much, much more complex. The phenomenon of national and ethnic identity was very old and always very powerful politically.
– So the church in the premodern world disseminates this discourse of «banal nationalism», in the absence of media?
– Yes. It is banal so far as it does not come to the forefront. It is banal until the national identity is threatened. For instance, in Canada today the most salient question perhaps is the question of the independence of Quebec. That is when it stops being banal. Same in Spain when there are demands for independence by the Basques or by the Catalans. It stops being banal, it becomes one of the main things. Or in Belgium, with the two ethnic entities there, the Flemish and the Walloons; they would have divided the country long ago if they had been able to decide what to do with Brussels, which is mixed. The same in Britain, first with the Irish, now with the Scots as well. It is banal until it becomes very salient. Then it stops being banal. Or with the immigrants in today’s Western Europe, when people increasingly feel that their identity is being threatened. What we see is the rise of right-wing parties in Europe which mainly emerged in reaction against immigration. So it stops being banal. It is one of the main developments in today’s West.
Interview by Petro Dolhanov
Literary editing by Olesia Kamyshnykova
The publication uses photographs from open sources and the author’s private archive
The article is available in Ukrainian
