THE PsYCHOLOGY oF WAR AND PEACE The Image of the Enemy THE PsYCHOLOGY OF WAR AND PEACE The Image of the Enemy
Edited by RoBERT W. RIEBER fohn fay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center City University of New York New York, New York
SPRINGER SciENCE+BusiNEss MEDIA, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
The Psychology of war and peace : the 1mage of the enemy 1 edited by Robert W. Rieber. p. em. Includes b1bl1ographlcal references and 1ndex. ISBN 978-1-4899-0749-3 ISBN 978-1-4899-0747-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-0747-9 1. War--Psychological aspects. 2. Host111ty
Cover illustration from a World War II Japanese rice paper print in the private collection of John Gach Books, Columbia, Maryland.
ISBN 978-1-4899-0749-3
© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher To Robert Jay Lifton and the Center on Violence and Human Survival, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
and to Morton Deutsch, Teachers College, Columbia University CONTRIBUTORS
DAVID BAKAN, Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, On• tario, Canada M3J 1P3
JOHN M. BROUGHTON, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027
PETRA HESSE, Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, Cam• bridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139 ROBERT J. KELLY, Brooklyn College, Graduate Center, City University of New York, Brooklyn, New York 11210
OTTO KLINEBERG, 45 Sutton Place South, New York, New York 10022
HEINZ-ULRICH KOHR, International Institute for the Study of Political Psy• chology, Silcherstrasse 26, D-8000 Munich 20, Federal Republic of Germany
JOHN E. MACK, Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, Cam• bridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
ELAHE MIR-DJALALI, Rapport, Inc., Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815
HANS-GEORG RADER, International Institute for the Study of Political Psy• chology, Hirshestrasse 9, D-8000 Munich 19, Federal Republic of Germany
HENDRIK J. C. REBEL, School of Economy and Management, Utrecht, The Netherlands
vii viii CONTRIBUTORS
ROBERT W. RIEBER, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York 10019
LORAND B. SZALAY, Institute of Comparative Social and Cultural Studies, Inc., Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815
JAMES A. THOMPSON, Academic Department of Psychiatry, Middlesex Hos• pital Medical School, London WIN 8AA, England
RALPH K. WHITE, Broadmead, 13801 York Road, Cockeysville, Maryland 21030 FOREWORD Can a Baby Be an Enemy?
Our world is in a deep, prolonged crisis. The threat of global nuclear war, the chronic condition of local wars, the imperilled environment, and mass star• vation are among the major forms this crisis takes. The dangers of massive overkill, overexploitation of the environment, and overpopulation are well known, but surprisingly little has been said about their potential interac• tions, their bearing upon each other. If there were to be a nuclear confronta• tion between today's superpowers, it might not take place in today's world, but in a far less friendly habitat, such as the world may be some decades hence. And it need hardly be added that the era of this particular super• power configuration may be waning rapidly, its place to be taken by other international arrangements not necessarily less threatening. To understand and cope with our situation we need correspondingly serious reflection. This volume forms a welcome part of that process. Un• avoidably, a large part of our thinking about the issues of human survival must be oriented to physical and biological aspects of the total danger. But it has not escaped the authors of this book that, coupled with these aspects, there are profound psychological dangers, such as loss of the sense of futu• rity, moral deterioration, and a fatalistic decline in the will to struggle to protect our home, the Earth. Recognition and confrontation of threat, like most of human existence, is fraught with conflict and paradox. It is, for example, easy to see (as Rieber and Kelly point out in Chapter 1 of this volume) that the enemy "possesses" us-in the sense that his actions, and our visions of his potential actions,
ix X HOWARD E. GRUBER govern our own behavior and, the more so, the more threatening and powel'• ful the enemy seems. But we can also be possessed by love, or by some vision of a better world to come. Scientific progress is equally equivocal. When, at the turn of the cen• tury, radioactivity was first discovered, both the threat and the promise of atomic power were very quickly seen (Soddy, 1909; Weart, 1988). As early as 1910, H.G. Wells wrote a novel depicting an atomic war. Later, reading that book, The World Set Free, had an important influence on Leo Szilard's atti• tude toward nuclear research in the 1930s. The reason for Well's optimistic title is that the war in the novel is limited, and when the fighting stops, the people experience a tremendous sense of liberation and a period of great creative flowering ensues. In history as we have known it there has been no such event, but we too know that when a war ends we are once again free to see the enemy as human, his baby as just a baby. Paradox and conflict are part of human existence, and nowhere is this more evident than in our contemporary confrontation with the threat to planetary survival. In each instance of this Protean antagonist we see the ambiguity of the growing domination of man over nature that we call "pro• gress." Today's gourmet dinner becomes tomorrow's garbage. Far easier to eat the one than to dispose of the other. This paradoxical love-hate relation we have with the world is reflected in the volatility and ambiguity of our attitudes toward whatever we construe to be the "Enemy." If the Enemy really were Satanic, we would hardly expect him or her or it to be yesterday's or tomorrow's ally. Yet that is just what we see when we look at the kaleidoscope of global alliances, stretching over the period from World War I to our vision of this or that World War III. The vacillations of the physicists who created nuclear weapons make a well-known story: Szilard, the prophetic physicist who first tried to mo• bilize physicists against contributing toward nuclear weaponry, and who then took the lead-when a Nazi victory seemed possible-in calling for making such weapons; Albert Einstein, lifelong pacifist, who followed Szilard's lead in helping to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initi• ate the Manhattan Project; J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed that Pro• ject and then, when he saw the first mushroom cloud at Los Alamos, said, "We have known sin." While there is doubt and vacillation, the direction of change has re• mained constant: toward greater dominion over nature and consequently greater capacity to destroy it. This pandemic escalation grows out of the systemic organization of society into competing interests-competing na• tions and competing firms and other institutions. In the military sphere escalation is built on a highly sophisticated knowledge base: we predict what the potential Enemy will do from our knowledge of what we ourselves are doing or hoping to do. And then our response to this postulated threat is to go the Enemy one better (if that is the word), so that we may preempt, FOREWORD xi avenge, and prevail. Meanwhile, the Enemy's imagination is at work in a very similar way. Escalation is thus the creature of self-fulfilling prophecy with a vengeance. And so the danger we confront is both our own construc• tion and objectively real. An episode that illustrates the expression of this process of construal in the mind of an influential individual is found in the biography of the Nobel laureate in physics, Hans Bethe. For some time Bethe had opposed con• struction of the hydrogen bomb and also resisted Edward Teller's efforts to recruit him for work on this project. He used as one argument some evi• dence that it could not be done. One day Teller informed him of decisive new findings. Bethe said " ... with this new idea I was convinced that the thing could be done, and since it could be done we had to be afraid that the Russians could and would do it, too" (Bernstein, 1981, p. 95). Formula: to find out what they will do, look in the mirror. Sometime later Bethe re• marked, ruefully, that if we had not built the hydrogen bomb, perhaps the Russians would not have done so. Ironically, a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists carried an article by Bethe entitled "Chop Down the Nuclear Arsensals" (Bethe, 1989). It closes: A fundamental change in the attitude and character of a country-or Bewusstseinswandel, to use the title of a recent book by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker-is possible: we have seen it in Germany's transforma• tion from Nazi empire to federal republic. This is happening today in the Soviet Union, fortunately without a war. But the West must undergo its own Bewusstseinswandel and realize that the Soviet government has changed and is no longer an "evil em• pire." We may pursue and stabilize this mutual, basic attitude change in joint enterprises -environmental problems, especially the control of car• bon dioxide and ozone, should be top priorities-and in agreements not to excessively arm opposing parties in local conflicts. If "avoiding war and ecological catastrophe" really does outweigh the idea of a class struggle in the Soviet Union, then peaceful coexistence is possible." (p. 15) One need not share exactly the vagaries of Bethe's sense of history in order to recognize in this story the fundamental and pervasive self-doubt that command of such weapons development quite properly engenders. And there is also a more positive note: the capacity to see in the Enemy a possible Friend. Now we come to examine the task that confronts us. This is surely not to wallow in fear of the Enemy, whether we construe it as the Foe-Nation, or warmongers, or war itself, or planetary destruction. Fear can be a weakening emotion, leaving in its wake more than a touch of shame. To be sure, as other authors in this volume emphasize, nuclear fear is constructed. At the same time, the situation is objectively fearsome; the Enemy really does possess nuclear weapons in overkill amount; the threat of nuclear winter and the possibility of other environmental disasters really will remain a part of our xii HOWARD E. GRUBER habitat for decades to come. So how can we accept our fears and at the same time struggle against them? Just as we have constructed our conception of the Enemy and partici• pated in making it real, we must find ways of transforming our images and transforming the realities with which they are coupled. In this work the human sciences have a role to play. First, we must criticize the language of Satanism and its opposite num• ber, Sanctimony. Whenever we feel ourselves becoming self-righteous, we might murmur "My Lai, Hiroshima, Nagasaki," if we are Americans, or other suitable confessions of national complicity in creating the present state of affairs. The point of this exercise is not to indulge in guilt-making, but to remind ourselves that, just as We are human, They are human. Second, we need to adopt the language of a commonly shared humanity. There are no We and They, there is only one side-Humanity. Third, since there are real dangers, it behooves us to identify them carefully, so that we can take aim against them. From a psychological per• spective, it seems to me that among the greatest Enemies are hedonism, self• interest, and passivity. In a time of severe crisis these are closely connected. Not everyone is a great visionary, but the human capacity to envision the future is strong and widespread enough that almost everyone can recognize the intensity of our crisis. Then why don't we all do something about it? Mainly, I believe, because we feel impotent. For many, led thus into pas• sivity, pursuit of self-interest and personal pleasure become basic orienta• tions faute de mieux. For others, a kind of limited, individualistic altruism becomes important: helping others, but not in ways designed to produce fundamental change. Psychologists contribute to this situation by focusing on individualistic motivations. Today this focus is moderated by some interest in limited forms of altruism. What we need is an approach that provides more psychological room for the world concerns that motivate this book. For a further discussion of this issue see Gruber (1989). There have been two major strands in psychological theories of motiva• tion for work (I omit physiological considerations here), both with wide and varied support. On the one hand there is the work-oriented approach• reflected in Veblen's concept of the "instinct of workmanship" and later in Kurt Lewin's stress on task-oriented behavior, or intrinsic motivation stem• ming from engrossment in the task itself. On the other hand there is the self or ego-oriented approach-reflected in Bentham's utilitarianism and in var• ious derivatives of Freud: One works for monetary gain, for self-aggrandize• ment, or for defense; the nature of the work does not enter into the desire to do it. Simplifying greatly, I will refer to these two aspects of motivation as task-orientation and ego-orientation. To take account of our present situation we need to add a third major consideration-world-orientation. By this I mean there are tasks we un- FOREWORD xiii dertake because we perceive that they need doing. We may put aside work we are engrossed in, work that possesses us; we may put aside blandish• ments of recognition and financial reward-to do something that the world needs done. Such a decision may well entail personal conflict. A case in point is Charles Osgood, as he relates it in his autobiography (1980). As early as 1958, under the influence of Jerome Frank, he began to develop his concept of GRIT, a proposal for the graduated reduction of international tension by taking limited unilateral steps toward arms reduction in the hope that the other side would reciprocate. Osgood's line of thinking may have had some influence at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. In today's world, some of Gorbachev's actions seem to be similarly propelled. Later on, describing his own projects, Osgood (1980) wrote:
One might think that, as my estimated probabilities for the survival of Mankind in the nuclear age go down, ... my urge to give highest prior• ity to writing Mankind 2000 should go up. But just the reverse has been the case. As prospects for Mankind's survival go down, the more I feel driven-like an artist getting ready to "paint his last picture" -to write my last scientific contribution, Toward an Abstract Performance Gram• mar, regardless of whether anyone will be around to read it. It is as ifl, too, am subject to a selfish egoism, that, under stress, takes precedence over altruism. (p. 387)
Osgood is a little hard on himself. Given his eminence and his previous record, his ego-needs for recognition would have been satisfied however he had resolved the inner conflict he portrays. It seems more plausible to de• scribe his situation as a conflict between task-orientation and world• orientation. To conclude, I wish to propose that this tridimensional system of mo• tives-task, ego, and world orientations-provides the more commodious framework we need in order to describe ourselves, our friends, and our enemies. There is no need to make a hard and fast choice among these orien• tations, each individual we describe has some of each. We need a scheme for recognizing the humanity of the Other, and for seeing our own when we look in the mirror. Our historic task is not the impossible one of suppressing either, but rather the more attainable goals of changing our own profiles and changing the way we read the profile of the Other.
Postscript: These remarks written in late 1989 seem just as pertinent now, in early 1991, although the implicit cast of characters may have changed. The general malaise in question is chronic for our age. HOWARD E. GRUBER New York, New York xiv HOWARD E. GRUBER
REFERENCES
Bethe, H. (1989). Chop down the nuclear arsenals. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 45, 11-15. Bernstein, J. (1981). Prophet of energy: Hans Bethe. New York: Dutton. Gruber, H. E. (1989). Creativity and human survival. In D. B. Wallace & H. E. Gruber (Eds.), Creative people at work: 7Welve cognitive case studies. New York: Oxford University Press. Osgood, C. E. (1962). An alternative to war or surrender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Osgood, C. E. (1980). Autobiography: Focus on meaning in individual humans, across cultures, and for survival of the human species. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography. Vol. 7, 335-393. San Francisco: Freeman. Soddy, F. (1909). The interpretation of radium. London: Murray. Weart, S. R. (1988). Nuclear fear: A history of images. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Well, H. G. (1910). The world set free. London: Odhams Press. PREFACE
Psychologists and other social scientists have been for many years interested in war, peace, and problems of world stability. Nevertheless, the literature on this topic has been, until very recently, seriously deficient both in terms of quality and quantity. More recently, however, behavioral scientists have developed a greater involvement in this area, which was most recently the province of academic political science and public policy studies. The impor• tance for a better understanding of the psychosocial foundations of war and other forms of violence in a world culture has never been more important in the world as it is today. The purpose of this book is to address this important issue of the psycho• social foundations of war and peace, particularly emphasizing the impor• tance of the making of enemies. Much of the thinking and scholarly work that is manifested in the chapters in this book grew out of workshops and panel discussions held over many years, starting in 1982, in various parts of the world. We trust that in this book we have adequately demonstrated the enor• mous growth and progress that has characterized the field over the last decade. This small but fruitful sample of various viewpoints clearly demon• strates the multifaceted interdisciplinary interests the field has generated in terms of both empirical-applied and theoretical-historical research. We hope that these contributions as well as others will continue to stimulate further contributions to the study of the psychosocial bases of war and peace.
XV CONTENTS
Foreword: Can a Baby Be an Enemy? ...... ix Howard E. Gruber
PART I. THEORY AND HISTORY
1. Substance and Shadow: Images of the Enemy...... 3 Robert W. Rieber and Robert f. Kelly Introduction: Enemies and the Nuclear Age...... 4 Approaches to the Psychology of Enmification ...... 6 Dissociation and the Psychology of Conflict ...... 12 The Vitality of Hate ...... 18 The Nazi Threat and the American Social Dream...... 21 Styles of Enmification in the Cold War...... 25 Afterword: Enmification in the Age of Glasnost ...... 29 Postscript: De-Enmification and the Cold War in Twilight...... 31 Notes...... 38 References ...... 38
2. Some Philosophical Propadeutics toward a Psychology of War . . . . 41 David Bakan Introduction...... 41
xvii xviii CONTENTS
Natural ...... 42 Real...... 46 Toward the Psychological...... 53 Some Psychological Phenomena to Be Noted ...... 55 References ...... 58
3. Enemy Images in the United Nations-Iraq and East-West Conflicts ...... 59
Ralph K. White
Enemy Images in the Arab World, Especially Iraq ...... 60 Enemy Images Now in the United States...... 64 Diabolical Enemy Images in the Cold War ...... 64 Three Major Misperceptions ...... 66 References ...... 69
4. The Contributions of Psychology to International Understanding: Problems and Possibilities...... 71
Otto Klineberg
5. Babes in Arms: Object Relations and Fantasies of Annihilation 85
John M. Broughton
From Objectivity to Subjectivity ...... 87 Psychoanalysis and Object Relations...... 91 Melanie Klein: Persecution and Repair ...... 94 Hanna Segal: The Nuclear Surreal...... 102 Franco Fornari: Internal Terrifier and External Enemy ...... 107 The End ...... 114 Notes ...... 116 References ...... 120
PART II. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
6. The World Is a Dangerous Place: Images of the Enemy on Children's Television ...... 131
Petra Hesse and John E. Mack
Methods ...... 132 CONTENTS xix
Results...... 133 Case Study of Enemies and Heroes ...... 135 The Plot ...... 143 References ...... 152
7. Perceptions of the Soviet Union and the Arms Race: A Ten-Nation Cross-Cultural Study ...... 155 ]ames A. Thompson
Introduction...... 155 The Image of the Enemy...... 156 How Western College Students View Russia ...... 158 National Differences...... 162 The Case of West Germany...... 165 The Case of North America ...... 166 Summary...... 167 References ...... 167
8. Fearing the Army and the Enemy: Psychological Explanation of the Dutch Sociopolitical Reality...... 169 Hendrick]. C. Rebel
Toward a New Paradigm for Political Psychology ...... 169 Functional Components of Thought in Peace and Security ...... 179 Psychological Explanations of a Sociopolitical Reality ...... 192 Summary...... 204 Appendix I: Sample Characteristics ...... 204 Appendix II: Operationalizations ...... 205 Appendix III: Zero-Order Product Moment Correlations ...... 209 Notes ...... 209 References ...... 209
9. Image of the Enemy: Critical Parameters, Cultural Variations .... 213
Lorand B. Szalay and Elahe Mir-Djalali
Summary and Objectives...... 213 The Spiral of Fear and Perceptual Distortion ...... 214 Images and Options ...... 215 Reconstruction oflmages Through the AGA Method ...... 217 The General Image of the Enemy ...... 222 Images of the Soviet Union and Other Communist Countries ..... 229 XX CONTENTS
Images from the Conflict Area of the Middle East...... 235 Changes in the Images Conveying Changes in Perceptions and Attitudes...... 241 General Trends and Conclusions ...... 246 References ...... 249
10. Psychological Correlates of Threat Perception in West Germany, 1978 and 1981 ...... 251
Heinz-Ulrich Kohr
Security and Threat ...... 252 Hypotheses ...... 253 Operational Definition of Perceived Military Threat for This Study ...... 255 Method and Samples ...... 255 Results...... 256 Discussion...... 261 Notes ...... 262 References ...... 262
11. Generalizational Learning and Paradigms of Military Threat in West Germany ...... 263
Heinz- Ulrich Kohr and Hans-Georg Rader
Changes in Public Opinion About National Security/Security Policy Since 1979 ...... 264 Youth and the New Social Movements in the Federal Republic. . . . 266 The Ecology Option and the Economic Growth Option: A Shift of Political Paradigm...... 268 Generational Learning: Stratification of Experience among Young People ...... 270 Perception of Security-Related Issues among West German Youth ...... 272 Military Threat Paradigms ...... 275 References...... 279
Index ...... 281