Why do we — not the politicians or the generals, but ordinary people — so often and so willingly support war, in the west and elsewhere? Read an extract from On the Warpath by Jim Orford, which examines the psychology of public support for armed action.
I have worked in psychology for over 50 years, but not in war studies, nor even in the branches of the discipline most likely to have an interest in war — political and peace psychology. My areas have been firstly clinical psychology and later, with perhaps somewhat greater relevance, community psychology… So, I come to the field of war studies afresh, without any established background in the subject…
War was, however, something that I had been thinking about, reading about, and promising myself I would write about, for many years… I was born in London during the Second World War. My father was in the forces and my mother was in effect a single parent. My father hardly spoke of his experiences during the war and I never asked him…
But I did grow up to develop a horror of war, an instinct for pacifism, a failure to understand how people could deliberately kill and maim others of their own kind. As a rather studious teenager for whom libraries and bookshops were some of my favorite places, I was surprised, appalled but intrigued, at the rows of books about wars and weapons of war. It was then that I began to form the idea that many people might actually rather like war, have an appetite for knowing about it, be attracted to the means of making war, give their support to the leaders who executed it on their behalf. Later, when our sons were teenagers in the 1970s, my wife and I put up a poster, from the film of that time, posing the conundrum, Suppose They Gave a War and No One Turned Up? But it was only much later, having retired, at least to the extent of no longer having duties to an employer that I had to perform, that I was able to set to and draft the book I had wanted to write for so long…
The spirit in which I approached the project I like to describe as one of exploration. I wanted to try and get some answers to the question that had been forming in my mind ever since my teenage years. Support for war was a mystery to me. I felt like a naïve, perhaps foolish, explorer. Surely the discipline of psychology that I had been party to for half a century would have some answers…
I believe I now have a better understanding of why we allow wars to happen. So powerful, I have concluded, are the psychological drivers of war support, that it is much to our credit that we remain at peace so much of the time. But the dangers of modern warfare are sufficiently great that we cannot afford to congratulate ourselves. We must try to comprehend why we continue making war and thereby to diminish the risks faced by future generations. In the final chapter of On the Warpath I bring together, in the form of a War Support Model, what I believe I have learnt. My conclusion, summarized in the model, is that three factors propel support for war.
So powerful, I have concluded, are the psychological drivers of war support, that it is much to our credit that we remain at peace so much of the time.
First and foremost, we accept an ever-readiness for the possibility of war. That acceptance rests on a militarism deeply embedded in our country’s or group’s history and culture, its memorials and heroes, our support for the military and admiration for weapons of war, along with the belief that war can be necessary and just, even virtuous. A chauvinistic national or group identity and a war-supporting form of masculinity that values power and dominance also play their parts. The second factor is the way in which we deal with threats, real and supposed, to our nation’s or group’s security. Threat perception flourishes more strongly when we believe the world is a dangerous, threatening one, when threat is perceived to be coming from an identified rival or enemy out-group, the less contact with and understanding of that group we have, and the more we subscribe to a threat-laden narrative encouraged by our leaders and the media. War support requires a large dose of mental simplification. That is the third factor. Support for war rests on cognitive simplicity regarding the circumstances threatening war, the enemy, and ourselves. It draws on our repertoire of simplifying mental mechanisms that enable us to distance ourselves from the costs of war and to disengage from normal moral constraints about harming others…
That understanding of the mystery of war support that has bugged me all my adult life is what this book offers. None of the individual insights contained herein are novel. Each of the elements on my model have been studied, written about, and reflected on by many others. What I aim to offer in this book, which I believe is original, is a bringing together of the various psychological facets involved…
I hope On the Warpath will contribute to an understanding of one of the great issues facing us all, and at the same time help to open up a relatively new area of psychology. The prevention of war continues to be of the utmost importance for the future health and prosperity, even survival, of humankind. Armed conflicts and threats to security continue. War between Ukraine and Russia erupted during the writing of the book [and renewed war in the Middle East while it was in press]. Great power rivalry between China and the USA and its allies, and associated military posturing, have continued to be in the news. There are warnings of conflicts to come if climate change is not mitigated. In order to prevent war, we need to understand how it happens, including why it has our support.
Jim Orford is Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at The University of Birmingham. He is a longstanding, internationally recognized researcher and writer in community psychology and addiction. He has been a leading campaigner for gambling reform in Britain and for recognition of the family effects of addiction internationally. His work has been published in over 50 different peer-reviewed journals, and he has written or edited over 11 books.
