As humans, we consider ourselves as the only rational species. We take rational decisions based on facts and probability. We do not do anything which goes against our interests. We also have empathy towards each other. We have a conscience which does not allow us to deter ourselves from the righteous path. Still, like any other species, we fight and quarrel which sometimes might result in physical injuries or even death. Fighting can occur at different levels; individual level, society level, state level or the state system level. On an individual level, our fighting nature may be attributed to our primal instincts such as love, self-defense, jealousy, greed, misdirected aggression, or just basic stupidity. But when a state or a country goes to war, do the reasons rise above the primal instincts of individuals or are they the same?
Some might argue that as there are good and bad individuals, there can be good or bad states. But how can we differentiate between a good state and bad state? The second question which stimulates out of this line of thinking is that are only bad states responsible for causing wars? While the first question might initiate a debate which can last for days the answer to the second question can be easily understood by statistics. In most of the cases, the so-called good states have initiated the wars. In fact after the World War II, United States of America is the biggest contributor to the war waged all over the world. Hence, we can put the arguments of wars being started by bad states to rest forever.
But this brings us back to our original question, what is the underlying reason behind countries going to wars? In this study we look at three documentaries; The Fog of war: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara by Errol Morris (2003), Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki (2005), and No End in Sight by Charles Ferguson (2007) to understand the reasons which make the most developed country in the entire world (USA), decide to go to war.
But before we take an in-depth look at the above-mentioned documentaries, we should take a step back and understand a little bit about the history of wars. Since the dawn of our civilization societies or states have been fighting with each other. The wars were waged mostly for the economic and religious reasons. Whenever a country felt that the profits of war were more than the cost involved they indulged in wars. Wars were fought to increase territories, to prove military supremacy or to further the religious agendas. As society evolved over the course of time, wars started to become more and more focused on profits. Probably the biggest example of wars waged to satisfy men’s greed can be found in the era of colonialism. Denmark, France, and England, and later USA and Japan sought control of the world. They waged wars, employed diplomatic maneuvers and every other trick mentioned inside or outside the books to gain control over as many territories as they could get their hands on. Eventually, they fought amongst each other to keep control of or to expand their colonies as there were no more new colonies left to conquer. The era of colonialism saw such looting of natural resources and barbaric and inhumane behaviors which the world cannot afford to see again. Every country wanted to maximize its profits at the expense of others and they did do that, in a grave and unforgivable manner.
So we know, behind every war fought since the beginning of our civilization, men’s greed to have more runs underneath. But, since the World War II, things have changed. The formation of United Nations put a check on the unrelenting profit-minded nature of countries. Now they could be held accountable. With the advent of democracy, the government became more and more accountable to its citizens and could no longer wage wars as it saw fit. Democracy provided the citizen with powers to punish the government. One wrong decision and the government could be toppled by the people. Democracy provided people with rights, freedom and liberty. However, even after the increased accountability of the government to its people and the checks and restrictions put on countries by various treaties under United Nations, the evil of wars still remain and still expands slowly. The culture of war is still thriving and sustaining itself.
The three documentaries are chosen as they cover major parts of the post-World War II era and help us to understand the mindset behind the USA’s foreign conflicts. The one argument that stands out the most in all of the documentaries and is effectively the reason given behind most of the America’s conflict is that America fights to protect their way of life, their privileges, and their rights. America wants to spread democracy and liberty all around the world. Whether it be the Vietnam War in the past or the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same reasoning is explained again and again to justify the acts. But are the reasons given by American government to its people and the world the same or there is something different altogether?
Robert H. McNamara was chosen as the Secretary of Defense in the year 1961 by the then president John F. Kennedy and continued to serve the post under President Lyndon B. Johnson till 1967. During his time as Secretary of Defense, he faced some of the toughest challenges in the form of Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. When asked about the Cuban Missile crisis he said, it was luck that saved the USA from going to an all-out nuclear war with Russia. For a matter of such grave proportions luck should never be a factor. He further says that rationality is overrated. Everyone involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis was a rational man, still all the rational men made decisions which brought both the countries within an inch of nuclear warfare (Fog of War).
According to McNamara, there were 7500 nuclear warheads in the USA, 2500 of which could be launched within 15 minutes of receiving the order. The power to initiate nuclear strike lies with the president. That is too much power in the hands of one person. And yet it is not power in itself that give rise to conflicts but the urge to show it off to establish one's military superiority which results in conflicts. Curtis Lemay, the then Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force argued that they should destroy Cuba as at that time the USA has a strategic advantage over Russia in nuclear warheads (17:1). Had President Kennedy agreed to Lemay we would have been living in a different world (Fog of War).
McNamara said that during World War II most of the Japanese cities were firebombed and burned to the ground. Many higher ranking officials at that time agreed that there was no need to drop atomic bombs on Japan as it was already destroyed. Still, the atomic bombs were dropped as a showcase of the USA’s strength. McNamara recalls he heard Lemay saying that if America were to lose the War they all will be tried as war criminals. In the documentary, McNamara asks what makes it immoral when you lose a war and not immoral when you win? That is a profound statement. In wars, there seems to be no rule book (Fog of War). History is written by the winners and when writing the history they absolve themselves of all their sins.
The Second big conflict during the time McNamara served as the Secretary of Defense was the Vietnam War. America said that it was fighting for the rights of Vietnamese people and wanted to bring democracy and liberty to the country. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the war in the name of democracy and liberty. It is true that sometimes you have to do evil to do some good, but the question as McNamara raises is how much evil we are ready to do to in the name of good (Fog of War). This culture of war which we see in this documentary will repeat itself again and again in the next documentaries. The show of power, the economic gains and our compliance to do evil in the name of good are the basic reasons which run beneath every war. When you strip down the reasons behind any war to their naked core you will find these reasons nestled there.
The documentary by Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, 2005) explicitly focuses on the reasons behind the wars which US government undertook over the years. The documentary reiterates the points made by former US presidents and other high-level officers to justify the actions of wars they have taken; the United States fights for upholding the ideals of democracy and liberty. The same ideology used in the Vietnam War is being used to explain each and every war that the United States undertook ever since after the Vietnam War. The 9/11 incident gave the president and pentagon unprecedented powers to do whatever they feel was right. As now any actions taken by them can be disguised as a means to fight against terrorism.
The documentary explains a term known as blowback. Blowback means the unintended consequences of foreign operations that were deliberately kept secret from the American population. This results in a state of confusion. Whenever a terrorist attack happens on US soils it leaves the people wondering as to what they had done to deserve such acts of terror. Since the previous operations were kept secrets the public has no idea of the concept of retaliation (Why We Fight).
Firstly, keeping the operations secrets frees the executive from any kind of accountability that they have towards their people. Secondly, whenever the US suffers an incident of blowback, the executive gets the opportunity to ride on the public anger and sanction any actions which they could not have done earlier. The same opportunity arose after the attack of September the 11th. The American public had no idea why they were attacked. The fact that they did not understand the reasons behind the attack made them even angrier than the attack itself. This gave the Bush administration a chance to carry forward with the plan that has been delayed since 1992. Since the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991, a void was created (who is the most powerful), which some of the American politicians wanted to fill. This idea of being acknowledged as the most powerful nation in the world thrived in the minds of politician and exploded after the attack of September the 11th (Why We Fight).
But there is also something more which guides this idea of military supremacy than just an acknowledgment of power. This idea has been first acknowledged by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dwight D. Eisenhower served as the president of the USA from 1953 to 1961. In his last speech before the end of his second term he said America is suffering from the military-industrial-complex and if this remains unchecked, it will have grave implications for the future. The military-industrial-complex consists of three parts the military, the industry and the congress (Why We Fight). The defense expenses of US today are above 650 billion dollars. The industries in the defense sector work on huge profit margins and they never want the profits to go down. The defense industries hire retired pentagon officers as their chief of staff and board members as they can open doors of negotiations through their contacts. This hiring of retired military and pentagon officers is known as revolving doors. Everyone looks after their own benefits. To keep the congress appeased and make sure that they pass the defense budget and any other budget required by the military, these industries open factories in all of the states of America. Closing the factories will result in unemployment and for a congressman; it will result in loss of votes. Hence, every congressman tends to support the military budget, how much ever nonsensical it might be (Why We Fight).
What Eisenhower predicted in 1961 is a real thing today. But one might ask how wars fit into this equation of military-industrial-complex. The immediate side of this can be understood very easily. More wars will result in more requirements of equipment and ammunition which in turn will increase the defense budget thereby increasing the profits of the defense-based industries. However, it does not stop here. Now the military-industrial-complex is not just people at the pentagon and congress and production of arms and ammunition. Now a major shift has occurred in the attention of industries. They have moved from just being producers or manufacturers to being service providers.
The actual war is only one of the facets of a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Post-war reconstruction and management sometimes cost more than the war itself. These companies act as private contractors in the reconstruction business and earn billions of dollars in profits. So it is clear that it is in the interest of the military-industrial-complex that the wars must go on.
The documentary also focuses on one facet of the war which nobody seems to want to discuss. It is the policy of economic imperialism. As the American and other developed markets are becoming more and more saturated there is a need to find other markets so that the industries can grow and survive. The developing countries have created some stringent norms to protect the interests of their own domestic industries. Since the advent of globalization and liberalization these markets are opening up, but not as fast the developed world would like. Toppling regimes in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan and installing a government to their liking allows the US government to open new avenues and markets for their products. The US is not acquiring any territories or colonizing any country but the wars do help it to expand its market reach. The documentary has termed this as economic colonialism (Why We Fight).
The above facts as shown in the documentary by Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, 2005) shed light on some of the important reasons which control the America’s war hungry foreign policy.
Still the rationale behind the wars could be defended if the promises of liberty and freedom made before starting the war were kept at the end of it. People of the war-torn countries could find some solace in it. But, as we will find out in the documentary by Charles Ferguson (No End in Sight, 2007), it is rarely so. The documentary deals with the post-war occupation of Baghdad and how the American policy not only failed to deliver on its promises but created the environment of anarchy which plagues the streets of Baghdad till date.
At the time, the documentary was made civilian casualties stood at more than 600,000. I do not believe that the death of so many people could be justified even if the promises were delivered upon. After the September 11th attack, the Bush administration decided to attack Iraq as it was supposedly providing assistance to Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization which was behind the attack. Throughout the documentary, it can be seen time and again that it was never so. The fact that Iraq possessed or was trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction was also fabricated based on the selected readings of a CIA report (No End in Sight). After it was widely accepted that the war in Iraq was a failure even president Bush himself said that Iraq has nothing do with the September 11th attack. Then why the USA under Bush administration decided to go to war with Iraq in the first place? There are many theories but all of them boils down to the points which support the existence of military-industrial-complex.
The reasons behind the Iraq War can be debated but our main focus is not on the reasons but on the promises made before the war. To handle the post-war situations in Baghdad, Organization for reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) was formed. OHRA was headed by retired general Jay Garner. OHRA was provided with no resources necessary to plan the occupation of Baghdad. Still the member of OHRA tried to work their best with what they had. None of the recommendations of OHRA was accepted by the Bush administration and later OHRA was phased out and replaced by Coalition Provision Authority. The new organization was headed by Jerry Bremer whose thinking was much in line with the Bush Administration. Unlike Jay Garner who had prior experience in post-war reconstruction Jerry Bremer had no prior experience or military background. The decisions were taken unilaterally by Brenner without consulting OHRA or later CPA basically resulted in the rise of insurgency in the post-war Iraq (No End in Sight).
Not only the recommendations of OHRA but many such recommendations made by other officials were also ignored. For example, the requirement of troops to occupy the post-war Iraq was estimated by General Eric Shinseki to be in the order of several hundred thousand. But the request was denied by the Bush administration (No End in Sight). Thus, it can be seen that providing Iraqi people with liberty and democracy seemed to the last thing on Bush administration’s agenda.
Since the promises were not delivered upon we come back to the original question of reasons behind the sanctioning of Iraq War and the role of military-industrial-complex in it. The total economic cost of the war was projected to reach about 1.8 trillion dollars. Out of this about 700 billion dollars were spent on directly fighting the war and in post-war reconstruction. That amount of money is almost impossible to comprehend. There is a quote in the documentary which sums it all; when the profits in wars are so high, we will never see an end to it.
Looking at the three documentaries one can deduce that the wars are still conducted just to serve a state’s economic agenda and for showcasing its powers. The rules have changed, the methodology has changed but the reason still remains dead simple. The development of military-industrial-complex has just shifted the beneficiaries of the wars from states to corporations. It is corporations which truly benefit from wars and they use governments as their pawns to improve their profits.
The ideas of liberty and democracy may be flaunted to appease the public, but the truth always remains under cover. The underlying theme of these documentaries helped to throw some light to part the fog of war in an attempt to explain why we fight. But when the bets are so high there is literally no end in sight.
Works Cited
LaSalle, Mick. "Morris Creates Compelling Story in McNamara Portrait." SFGate. SFGate, 23 Jan. 2004. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Morris-creates-compelling-story-in-McNamara-2807836.php>.
No End in Sight. Dir. Charles Ferguson. Perf. Campbell Scott and Gerald Burke. 2007. Web.
Morris, Wesely. "War Without End." Boston.com. The Boston Globe, 10 Aug. 2007. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2007/08/10/war_without_end_1186707075/>.
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Dir. Errol Morris. Perf. Robert McNamara. 2003. Web.
Why We Fight. Dir. Eugene Jarecki. Perf. Gore Vidal and John McCain. 2005. Web.
