Russian war fever: Will it spread? (Part 1)

By guest author Alfred L. McAlister, Ph.D.

The chapter on “War Fever” in the forthcoming International Handbook of Negotiation and Mediation (M. Gallucio, Ed., Berlin: Springer) analyzes the psychology behind ploys used to gain popular support for military aggression. These include:

Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin. Photo by Cherie A. Thurlby in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons.
  • Invocation of a moral obligation
  • Advantageous comparisons with worse actions by other nations
  • The demonization of enemies

Usama Bin Laden described his followers’ attacks on the U.S. as a defense of threatened Palestinian people and children dying because of economic sanctions against Iraq, contrasted it with the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II, and labeled the people of the U.S. and other Western nations as godless infidels.

In the U.S. attack on Iraq, the action was portrayed as a morally imperative act of self-defense, much less reprehensible than Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical warfare against his own people, while Hussein was depicted as a snake in political cartoons.

Following this pattern, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his followers justify the invasion of Crimea as a humanitarian act to protect threatened compatriots, contrast it with the certainly less defensible U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and describe the new leaders of Ukraine as terrorists and Nazis.

These patterns are predictable and, unless people learn to anticipate and reject them, will continue to be effective ways to stir up popular national support and make international excuses for military aggression.

Dr. Alfred McAlister’s essay “War Fever: How Can We Resist?” will be published this spring in the International Handbook of Negotiation and Mediation, edited by Mauro Gallucio (Berlin: Springer).

Morally disengaging from drone warfare

The headline of a Sunday New York Times article by national security reporter Scott Shane declares “The Moral Case for Drones.” A more appropriate title might well be “A Case Study in Moral Disengagement.”

The arguments in the article illustrate many of the principles of moral disengagement  previously discussed in this blog, including:

Drone launched off Navy ship
Drone launched off U.S. Navy ship. Image in public domain.

Shane begins by noting that critics of President Obama’s drone program focus on issues such as “collateral damage” (a favorite euphemism for killing children and other innocent civilians). He then comments that people may be surprised to learn that “some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists believe armed, unmanned aircraft offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare.”

As an example of a moral philosopher, he cites Bradley Strawser, a former officer in the Air Force and assistant professor of philosophy in the Naval Postgraduate School who told him that using drones “to go after terrorists” was “not only ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory.”

Why? Drones are advantageous for “identifying targets and striking with precision.”  In making such a statement, Strawser is using euphemisms for murder (“striking targets”) while framing it in pseudo-moral language (“ethically obligatory”).

Strawser identifies “targets” as “terrorists” and “extremists who are indeed plotting violence against innocents” (demonization). He says drones are better than any other weapon in avoiding collateral damage (advantageous comparison), and suggests that drone operators can time their strikes so that innocents will not be nearby and can even divert a missile if a child happens to wander into the target area (misrepresentation of consequences).

Most historians seem to agree that one of the major causes of World War I was not the killing of an archduke, but the eagerness of weapons specialists in different countries to try out their great new weapons and prove how invincible they were.

One can argue that World War II ended up with the U.S. trying out its great new atomic weapon to prove how invincible it is—and thereby initiating an arms race that continues to threaten life on earth.

Might we make better moral choices than unleashing the favored weapon of the hour?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

More than a few “bad apples”: American soldiers, the legacy of torture, and the trauma behind it

[Editor’s Note:  In today’s post, we introduce a new feature to our engagingpeace.com blog. Periodically we intend to offer a brief review of a contemporary book that sheds light on issues such as war, torture, terrorism and their aftermaths, as well as on peace, reconciliation, and apology and forgiveness. We also invite our readers to submit commentaries on books they have found helpful.]

Review of None of us were like this before: American soldiers and torture By Joshua E.S. Phillips

Reviewed by Charikleia TsatsaroniNone of us were like this before

In this thought-provoking and revealing book, Joshua Phillips asks why U.S. forces and officials believed that torture was effective, permissible, and necessary, and what were the factors that led them to engage in such practices.

He begins his quest with the death of Sergeant Adam Gray, who made it home from Iraq and died in his barracks. Phillips then guides us through his interviews with ordinary American soldiers, their families and friends, victims of torture, military, governmental, and intelligence officials, human rights lawyers, and activists, to name a few.

These interviews provide many examples of Albert Bandura’s socio-cognitive mechanisms of moral disengagement (e.g., advantageous comparison, euphemistic labeling) as the expanding set of individuals connected with the use of torture try to make sense of what happened.

Phillips’ narratives lead inevitably to the idea that Americans who engaged in torture were not just a “few bad apples” (p. ix) and that the factors leading to torture did not lie only within individuals but also and most importantly within the societal context and its interwoven systems.

His book also strongly reinforces the importance of greater attention to the trauma inflicted on soldiers by their involvement in torture and abuse; it is apparent that most of his interviewees deal daily with personal demons.

Overall, I would recommend this very readable book for its eye-opening narrative and its ability to keep you involved until its painful ending, which highlights the fact that wars have victims on both sides.

Even physically untouched “victors” can bear wounds forever because of what they did in the context of war.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.