Elon College, North Caroline

303d. 66
ee ges
 OCT. 14.1989

NO LONGER THE
PROPERTY OF
ELON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE
 Genetic Seeds
of Warfare
Evolution, Nationalism, and Patriotism

PAUL SA AW
AND YUWA WONG

POSTON
UNWIN HYMAN
LONDON SYDNEY WELLINGTON

891880
 Copyright © 1989 by Unwin Hymaan, Inc.
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without
permission.
All rights reserved.

Unwin Hyman, Inc.,

8 Winchester Place, Winchester, MA 01890, USA

Published by the Academic Division of

Unwin Hyman, Ltd,
15/17 Broadwick Street, London W1V 1FP, UK

Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd,

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Allen & Unwin (New Zealand) Ltd,

in association with the Port Nicholson Press Ltd, 60 Cambridge Terrace,
Wellington, New Zealand

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shaw, R. Paul.
Genetic seeds of warfare.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1.War. 2.Genetics. J. Wong, Yuwa, 1952-
II. Title.
U21.2.849 1988 303.66 88-14256
ISBN 0-04-445 187-5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Shaw, R. Paul
Genetic seeds of warfare : evolution,
nationalism and patriotism.
1. Warfare
I., Title II. Wong, Yuwa
355° 02
ISBN 0-04-445 187-3

Typeset by Saxon Printing Ltd., Derby

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
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Table of Contents

Preface xi
CHAPTER 1
Why This Study Matters
Introduction
War Proneness
Nature of Aggression
Functions of Aggression
Ultimate versus Proximate Causes
The Evolutionary Approach
Our Theory in Brief
Organizational Strategies WR
OD
—_
Pe
eeNAAR

PARTI
Ultimate Evolutionary-Strategies:-An Overview 21
CHAPTER 2
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity a
Introduction 23
Inclusive Fitness 26
Kin Selection a7
The Empirical Record 31
Kin Recognition Bf
A Caveat re
Conclusion 40
CHAPTER 3
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 43
Introduction 43
Social Benefits to Group Solidarity
Group Fissioning and Competition 48
Weapons Development 53
Balance of Power 53
Competition and Brain Size 58
Formalization and Conclusion 58

PART I
Emergent Psychological Strategies: An Overview 63
vill

CHAPTER 4
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
Introduction
Epigenesis: Origins
Epigenesis: Biases at Work
Bounded and Adaptive Rationality
Synthesis
Xenophobia
Language, Classification, and Emotions
Tying It Together
CHAPTER 5
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage
Introduction
The Identification Mechanism
Cognition
Emotion
Modeling Functions of the Identification Mechanism
The Identification Mechanism as a Mental Map
Preferred-Group Membership
Conclusion

PART III
Reinterpreting the Empirical Record: An Overview
CHAPTER6 |
African Coups d’Etat
Introduction
Continuities: Origins in Precolonial Africa
Statehood and Colonialism
Continuities: Effects in Postcolonial Africa
Isolating Primary Determinants
Primary versus Secondary Determinants
Alternative Explanations
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7
Nationalism and Patriotism 137
Nationalism: An Ancient Answer to a Modern Challenge 137,
Inclusive Fitness Logic of Nationalism 140
Japan 143
 South Africa 146
Israel 148
Iran 151
Afghanistan 154
Patriotism: Old Bottle, New Wine 158
Inclusive Fitness Logic of Patriotism 15?
United States 162
USSR 165
Conclusion 167

PART IV
Mobilizing for Action: An Overview 171
CHAPTER 8
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 173
Introduction 173
Confronting Alternative Theories 174
CHAPTER 9
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 195
Introduction 195
Traditional Approaches 97
A New Approach? 204
Enter Reality 206
Is There A Way Out? 208
Appendix I
A Cost-Benefit Framework Applicable to Ethnic Conflict 211
Introduction aah
Preamble to the Model
A Simple Cost-Benefit Framework 215
The Tullock Extension 216
Incorporating Inclusive Fitness 218
Death as a Rational Strategy 221
Criticism and Reply dd
Discussion Fi
Conclusion zat
Addendum 228
Appendix JI
Incest Avoidance and Early Warfare 233
Bibliography 239
Author Index 263
Subject Index 269
 Preface

This book began in Beirut in 1979. One of us was stationed there, with the
United Nations, working on development problems in the Middle East.
Lebanon, once hailed as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” had
accomplished the prosperity all Arab countries sought. Yet, in only a few
years, war demolished its economy, scarred its people with tragedy, and
presented the world with a puzzle no one quite understands.
Witnessing the aftermath of battle is a great shock. But it is the way
people at war systematically pervert and distort “civilized” values that so
affronts the rational mind. Calm, loving friends become soldiers and killers,
religion sounds the battle cry, and the ‘“‘us versus them’ mentality shows no
mercy. How can one return to the day-to-day work of development
problems, let alone normal living, without trying to come to terms with the
Lebanons of the world? This book is the result of such an effort.
Warfare is like an iceberg. We see its tip, but its foundations are largely
hidden. To picture it in its entirety requires probing beneath the surface. To
find that perspective, we began to look in unusual places, to consider theories
and approaches unfamiliar to most social scientists. Five years later, we had
published our first papers on warfare. In another three years Genetic Seeds of
Warfare was completed.
We expect our theory to be controversial. It is a radical approach that not
only challenges contemporary theories of warfare but shows why existing
peace initiatives are inept. Genetic Seeds of Warfare is not a political agenda,
however. It is the result of scientific inquiry. We avoid moralizing, seeking
only to communicate “what is,” not “what ought to be” about human
nature. The only moral we would advocate is that behaviors and institutions
that are outfoxing humanity’s efforts to prevent nuclear annihilation be
abandoned.
This book would not have been possible without the support of many
people and institutions. Our greatest debts are to Lori Lothian, our editorial
and research assistant; to Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University and
Braxton Alfred of the University of British Columbia for encouragement of
our work; to Heribert Adam of Simon Fraser University, Kogila Moodley
Adam of the University of British Columbia, and John Grunau for sharing
their insights; and to Lisa Freeman, editor at Unwin Hyman, for seeing this
book to publication.
Reviewer comments always play a vital role in exposing weaknesses in a
manuscript and sharpening its focus. For comments on earlier drafts we are
therefore indebted to Claude Phillips of Western Michigan University, to
Gary R. Johnson of Lake Superior State College, and to J. David Singer,
Director of the Correlates of War Project, University of Michigan. The final
product does not, of course, reflect their views, nor does it necessarily satisfy
all their queries.
For financial support, we thank the Canadian Institute for International
Peace and Security. Brian Tomlin and John Sigler of the Norman Paterson
School of International Affairs, Carleton University, were extremely suppor-
tive during the early stages of this research, providing facilities and much
needed encouragement. Special thanks to John Graham of the University of
British Columbia for graciously providing facilities during the final research-
ing and writing of this book; to Debbie Shunamon, Connie Smith and Kathy
Shynkaryk, all of the University of British Columbia, for their wizardry on the
word processor. Finally, extra thanks to Kathy Shynkaryk for her help and
enthusiasm.
Views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors alone.
They should not be associated with any international agency, government
institute, university, or individual with whom the authors are affiliated.
Genetic Seeds of Warfare, an independent project, was submitted and
accepted for publication by Unwin Hyman in September, 1987.

R. Paul Shaw,
NEW YORK,1988

Yuwa Wong,
VANCOUVER, 1988
 CHAPTER |
Why This Study Matters
The most persistent sound which
reverberates through humanity's
history is the beating of
war
{Arthur Koestler 1978}

INTRODUCTION

At an invited lecture at the University of British Columbia a concerned

student asked: “Do you think nuclear war is inevitable?” A hushed audience
awaited an answer from a scientist who had conducted one of the largest
empirical studies on war. David Singer, director of the “Correlates of War
Project,” replied, “I don’t think we will see a worldwide nuclear holocaust in
the next ten years, but if things continue
as they are now, I can’t foresee
escaping limited nuclear war.””?
In the nuclear age, an informed, rational response to curtailing propen-
sitiesfor warfare is one ofextreme pessimism. Humans, with their unique
capacity for reflection, perceive the strong possibility of their own annihila-
tion. Such perceptions are based not only on media images of pending doom,
mass destruction, and personal pain; they are motivated by
failures to reduce nuclear stockpiles; the coexistence of deterrence policy with
ever-accelerating arms races, and by worries that technical malfunctions or
random errors will somehow
do us in (that is, Murphy’s Law). In the spaceof
a few decades, nuclear technology has eliminated tolerable margins of error.
One mistake could prove fatal.
Perhaps most alarming is that experts best prepared to disavow
doomsday scenarios are, themselves, casting gloomy forecasts. Carl-
Freidrick von Weizsacker, director of the Max-Planck Institute in the Federal
Republic of Germany, echoes Singer’s foreboding assessment. On dismissing
faith in the doctrine of deterrence, mutual assured destruction, detente, and
disarmament through arms control, he comments:
2 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

People think that I can propose something. My answer is that I propose to

stop and think for a while. The question, “What do you propose?” is still the sort
that suppresses the truth that there may be no real means of preventing a nuclear
war or an aggressive foreign policy carried out by our enemy by threatening
limited war. [1980b, p. 201]

Professor Fred Knelman, author of Reagan and the Bomb (1986), says of
our current predicament: “There is little doubt we are all travelling on the
Titanic.”
This prospectus provokes the most perplexing question facing modern
civilization. How can we perceive the possibility of self-annihilation without
serious efforts to abolish the threat? Einstein raised this question more than
40 years ago: ‘Why has the unleashed power of the atom changed everything
except our thinking about war?” Boulding (1962), White (1984), and
countless others query why peace research has been accorded such low
priority in government funding. Compared with minuscule amounts for
“peace” research, the world spends nearly $2 million per minute on
armaments (1987 figures). And, how is it the vast majority of people in the
world sincerely professes their desire for_peace-while-war rages in every
corner of the earth?
Such a paradox has caused confusion and disillusionment to the extent
that humanity’s propensity for warfare has been called an irreversible animal
instinct, necrophilia, a pathological degeneration of basic human impulses, a
spin-off of original sin, or a cancer in the vast body politic (Alcock 1972; Jolly
1978). As one journalist observes: ‘““We don’t know why we have got into this
situation, we don’t know how to get out of it, and we have not found the
humility to fully admit we don’t know. In desperation, we simply try to
manage our enmity from day to day” (Powers 1984, 55).
Needless to say, if humanity’s propensity for warfare is an aberration in
human evolution, we would inevitably face extinction. Theré would belittle
prospect for understanding how or why it came about,or how it might
be
curtailed. Contentious, but far more reasonable, is the premise that
humanity’s propensity for warfare serves discernible functions. This implies
human beings are responsible for the path they have selected. It also places the
onus on science to understand the reasons for this path. Why was humanity’s
propensity for attack and defense adopted in the first place? Why hasitbeen
retained_and_ reinforced in the process of human evolution? How does it
express itself in contemporary situations, particularly in terms of nationalism
and patriotism? Why.do we find it so-difficult to abandon this. propensity
when it threatens the existence of the human race?
The most important, yet unresolved question, then, becomes why
warfare exists at all. Specific differences in warfare, its forms and the
 Why This Study Matters
3

historical conditions surrounding the outbreak of war, are of secondary

importance. To answer this fundamental question a truly interdisciplinary
approach must be engaged, and age-old premises, usually taken for granted in
the social sciences, must be reevaluated. By developing a general paradigm (or
line of reasoning) that subsumes and orders existing analytical approaches,
new theory, new insights, and new policy implications can be generated.
This chapter sets the stage for our theory by condensing research on war
proneness and aggression. Such information has been widely used by social
scientists to imply that humanity does, indeed, have a propensity for warfare.
However, such information.only.scratches the surface. This will become
apparent when attention is drawn. to differences between ultimate versus
proximate or situational causes in warfaring propensities and to the role of
evolutionary theory in deciphering these propensities.

What kinds of evidence convey war proneness? Some social scientists view
Ci
the frequency of warfare among “‘primitive” tribes and “‘modern”’ nations as
the most persuasive data. Montagu (1976) cites evidence of some 14,500
wars during the last 5,600 years of recorded history, or wars
2.6 per year.
From his tally, only 10 of 185 generations have known uninterrupted peace.
Burke (1975) makes a similar point; there have been only 268 years of peace
during the last 3,400 years of history. Peace thus comprises only 8% of the
entire history of recorded civilization.
More recently, the Correlates of War Project at the University of
Michigan shows there is virtually no evidence of a secular trendup or down in
the incidence of warfare between 1816 and.1977 (Singer and Small 1972;
Singer 1981). This suggests that war proneness is a “constant” in modern
history. Since World War II, Valzelli (1981) notes there have been more than
150 wars, scrimmages, coups d’état, and revolutions. During this period of
“deceitful peace,” he reports an average of 12 acts of war occurring
simultaneously per year, with only 26 days of actual peace. Some 25 million
humans were killed during the last 35 years, more than the total number of
soldiers killed during the two world wars.
For other social scientists, the absence of truly peaceful cultures
represents the strongest evidence of war proneness. The search for such
cultures was fueled by the assumption that Homo sapiens were peaceful
creatures during their hunting—and—gathering days and that strife over
matters of possession grew out of developing horticulture and agriculture.
 4 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Cultural anthropologists were particularly interested in this issue. If lethal

conflict between individuals of the same species was unique to humans (as
maintained by Lorenz 1966) and if it existed in some cultures but not in
others, then the propensity for organized killing among humans could be
attributed to cultural differences alone.
Evolutionary biologists helped resolve the debate by reexamining
hunter-gatherer contexts to provide several new insights. First, there are
strong indications that many of the injuries apparent in remains of
Australopithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens of the European fourth
and pre-fourth glacial periods resulted from combat (Roper 1969). Second,
available anthropological data on.more than 90 hunter-gatherer bands
belonging to over 30. different cultures reveal that the only bands that can be
classified as peaceful are the Eskimos of the Yukon, the Siriono of Bolivia,
and the Semai.of Malaya. Third, among hunter-gatherer bands not engaging
in warfare, aggression and conflict within bands still commonly occurs over
other resources.that.are.worth defending and in short supply (Barash 1979).
Fourth, hunter-gatherer bands enjoying relatively long periods of peace
share one. characteristic — they live in relative isolation or under nomadic
conditions.where territorial conflict tends to be ruled out (Ottenberg 1978).
Finally, closer-examination.of.most-“peaceful” hunter—gatherer bands, (for
example, Eskimos) often uncovers a history punctuated by instances of
territoriality,.organized-killing,.or warfare (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1979). In short,
\while the organization of lethal conflict may well hinge on cultural evolution, &
2S the propensity for lethal.conflict among humans appears to have coevolved —~
( with their capacity for.culture.
Still other social scientists see aggression and warfare most visible in
ethnically inspired conflicts. Greeley (1974), for example, estimates that as
many as 20 million people have died in ethnic conflicts since World War I.
During the same period, Connor (1972, 1983) estimates that nearly half of
the world’s states experienced varying degrees of ethnically inspired disso-
nance. Scores of interdisciplinary studies also show (1) that ethnic conflict has
been responsible for heavy loss of life in ‘‘primitive’ and “modern” societies
alike (Enloe 1980; Foster and Rubinstein 1986), (2) that most modern states
have experienced ethnically inspired dissonance such as coups d’état and civil
wars (Connor 1984; T. H. Johnson et al. 1984; Welch 1986), (3) that ethnic
communities are busy promoting national and international separatist
movements in a great many countries (Boulding 1979; Horowitz 1987), (4)
that nationality-based ethnicity has experienced a kind of renaissance
throughout the world (A. D. Smith 1981b; Shaw 1985a), and (5) that
cooperation among ethnic groups, under the guise of patriotism, often occurs
Why This Study Matters 5

only for purposes of fighting other, more threatening out-groups (for

example, Otterbein 1968; Reynolds 1987).
FIGURE 1.1. Military expenditures and development: priorities in perspective, 1980-1990,
Figures provided here are from published and unpublished sources including the World Bank,
8 agen for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Priorities, and the United
ations,
Crude Estimates $US Billions

Estimated Estimated Estimated Total

official cost to cost to world
development implement implement military
assistance ’ UN world UN plans expenditure
to less plans of and to eliminate (1980-90)
developed action outstanding
counitries (1980-90) debt of less
(1980-90) developed
countries
(as of 1990)

Finally, priorities attached to modern warfare or war preparation are

self-evident
in terms of financial commitments. Figure 1.1 shows that world
military expenditures are estimated to total approximately $8 trillion
between 1980-1990. This is 13 times the amount required to implement
United Nations’ “World Plans of Action”-aimed-at eliminating plagues and
pestilence, reducing starvation, purifying water, assisting refugees, providing
basic shelter, and so-on-tt is 22 times the total amount of development
assistance given by rich countries to poorer countries.’ Ruth Sivard’s (1979)
provocative assessment of humanity’s commitment to peace contends that
the world invests 2,500 times more on the machinery of war than on the
machinery of peacekeeping.
 6 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

NATURE OF AGGRESSION

That warfare is such a pervasive feature of human history suggests that war
proneness may be innate or unalterable. However, the term inate is
commonly used to imply that Homo sapiens are genetically determined or
inherently driven to fight. It also implies little chance of modifying such drives
through learning, culture, or environmental manipulation. No evidence
exists to substantiate such a hypothesis. Moreover, the idea that warfare is
the selective mechanism of cultural evolution — that cultures which wage
war most often, most ferociously, and most successfully will live on while
others will die out — is highly debatable (Otterbein 1968).
i the other hand, there can be little doubt that the capacity to fight has
evolved through natural selection. Homo sapiens have evolved the capacity
to respond aggressively to threats just as they have evolved the capacity to
learn culture and language. Such capacities become operative when
prompted by appropriate stimuli and environment. Their evolution suggests
that physiological and related mental development is involved. Since war
proneness and aggression are related, it is instructive to take stock of the
nature of aggression, how it is expressed anatomically and neurochemically,
and what functions it serves.
First, it is clear that aggression operates consistently and is widespread in
the animal kingdom. The question of aggression has consumed evolutionary
biologists from the time of Darwin, who himself viewed the struggle for
\existence as the fuel of natural selection. In his view, the struggle for survival
concerned far more than just two animals battling to the death. He extended
it metaphorically to, say, a cactus “‘battling” against drought or a flower in
bloom “‘struggling”’ with its fellows for the attention of insects (Ruse 1971).
A major revision of the Darwinian model was set into motion by the
work of Konrad Lorenz (1966). Lorenz argued that Darwin’s view of animal
aggression as an inevitable bloody battle to the end was erroneous. Instead,
he maintained it applied only to predator—prey relationships between
different species, not to conflict between animals of the same species. From
observing fights between animals of the same species — a very common kind
of animal aggression — Lorenz reported a kind of social interaction wherein
fighting is always restrained by ritual, bluff, and violence of a nonfatal kind.
He also observed appeasement gestures (which were made to ensure the
winners would not follow through to the kill) of animals losing a fight (Ruse
1979).
Lorenz used the example of wolves to point out that animals capable of
killing one another had evolved inhibitions against killing conspecifics who
exhibited appropriate gestures of submission. Wolves are equipped with
Why This Study Matters fs

powerful weapons—strong jaws and sharp teeth—and are able to kill weaker
members of their species instantaneously. Yet when wolves fight, they will
generally snap at each other without doing much damage. When one of the
combatants tires or falls, the stronger animal will leap in for the kill. At this
point, however, Lorenz observed an astonishing phenomenon. Instead of
trying to defend itself against this final onslaught, the weaker animal would
present the most vulnerable part of its body, its throat, to the victor. Though
easy to sever the jugular vein of the loser, the victor would snap at the other
animal’s throat, somehow unable to bite. Some innate inhibition seemed to
prevent killing.
Lorenz’s findings threw the study of human aggression into a quandary
because humans clearly do participate in the murder, cannibalization, and
organized killing of their own species. For behavioral ethologists, this implied
that the human propensity for lethal conflict might have evolved for purely
cultural reasons. From this, behavioral psychologists construed that what is
learned might simply be unlearned by social manipulation.
Modern ethological and zoological research takes credit for proving
Lorenz wrong. Lorenz’s observations of animal behavior in the wild simply
did not cover a sufficient period of time. With improved time-series data, it
has been shown that many animals kill conspecifics quite frequently. The list
includes gulls, langurs, lions, hippos, hyenas, macaques, elephants, and
chimpanzees (Wilson 1975; Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1979; Morris 1983). The follow-
ing generalizations can be made from recent research and classical works in
evolution:

1. Aggression between animals of different species always results in

ethal conflict in predator—prey relationships.
Aggression between animals of the same species often results in
murder and cannibalism.
3. Aggression between social animals of the same species often results in
organized murder, cannibalism, or lethal conflict.
Aggression between social and nonsocial animals of the same or
different species also results in ritualized conflict involving bluff,
restraint, or violence of a nonfatal kind.

These generalizations are important to the study of human conflict. They

leave little doubt that murder and cannibalism exist among all social species
including social insects, other nonhuman animals, and humans. They convey
that rituals in human conflict (for example, white flags, habeas corpus) have a
counterpart in nonhuman conflict. Perhaps most important, they reveal that
organized lethal conflict is not unique to humankind but is a social
8 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

TABLE 1.1
Anatomical Correlates of Human Aggressive Behaviors
Feelings or Brain structure involved as
behavioral
patterns Triggers Suppressors

Anxiety Cingulate gyrus Cerebellar lobes

Cerebellar fastigium
Aversion Cingulate gyrus Corticomedial amygdala
Hippocampus Septal region
Mesenchephalic tegmentum Cerebellar fastigium
Periaqueductal gray matter
Sex-related aggression Anterior hypothalamus
Ventromedial hypothalamus
Tubero-mammillir complex
Irritative aggression Medial hypothalamus Frontal lobes
Posteromedial hypothalamus Septal nuclei
Thalamic center median Cerebellar lobes
Thalamic lamella medialis Cerebellar fastigium
Dorsomedial thalamus
Anterior cingulum
Anterior (ventral) hippocampus
Centromedial amygdala

TABLE 1.2
Brain Neurochemical Correlates of the Various Types of Aggression

Serotonin Norepinephrine Dopamine Acetylcholine

Type of
Aggression it L df 1 T its Ti IL

Competitive + + - + +
Defensive + + + +
Irritative ah & “F ar AF + nF
Territorial + =
Maternal protective RE =

Notes: T, Turnover; L, level; +, increases; —, decreases.

Source: Adapted from Valzelli (1981).

characteristic shared by several social insects and other nonhuman animals as

well. :
It is not surprising, therefore, that humans, like other animals, are
endowed with physiological.and neurochemical responses which underlie
their capacity for aggression (Valzelli 1981; Neuman 1987). During the past
20 years, researchers have identified specific brain mechanisms implicated in
aggressive behaviors, the role of stimuli which act as triggers for aggression,
Why This Study Matters
9

and different goals served by aggressive behaviors. Following Valzelli, brain

structures which are involved are exemplified in Table 1.1, whereas evidence
on neurochemical correlates of aggressive behaviors is summarized in Table
dog,
Valzelli’s (1981) review of a vast literature has produced a biologically
useful definition of aggression: It is that component of normal behavior
which, under different stimulus-bound and goal-directed forms, is released
for satisfying vital needs. Should desires for vital needs be thwarted,
aggressive energies may be directed to remove barriers in order to attain
them. In other words, Valzelli acknowledges the assertive aspects of
aggression and its role in satisfying essential needs. Satisfaction involves a
two-way interaction between organism and environment, where environ-
ment can mean conflicting interests of another organism or species. Valzelli’s
definition is, therefore, far more comprehensive than common usage in
international relations, for example, where aggression is typically defined as
an unprovoked attack.

FUNCTIONS OF AGGRESSION

Throughout the history of individuals and individuals in groups, there can be

little doubt that aggression has performed discernible functions and_that
many of these functions concern vital needs_bearing on survival and
reproduction. The more that aggressive behavior has benefited humans, the
more we might expect it to have become institutionalized over time. Studies
by behavioral biologists (ethologists) strongly suggest that most ritualized
re and lethal conflict has been adopted by nonhuman animals to_
resolve problems of s ntially limiti es peracs onal
This is particularly evident
in areas where the same food, sleeping or breeding places are scarce. To
prosper, animals must space themselves out in ways that ensure their
demands for resources do not outstrip supply. By aggressive behavior, they
exert pressure on their conspecifics to enforce population distribution over a
wider area and ensure the security of their territory.
geression and lethal conflict also function to resolve male competition
for females. That many male vertebrates fight only at mating time, and solely
for the possession of females, points to the existence of a selective advantage
to fighting between rival males. Namely, the winners produce more offspring
and, thus, further the share of their own genes in the total gene pool.
Moreover, fighting is reinforced by female reluctance to mate easily or freely
10 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

with any male. Since females make a much greater investment in the
procreation of offspring (that is, in time and energy), it is in their best interests
to await proof of the strongest, healthiest, and most dexterous males (Barash
1979).
»Finally, ritualized forms of conflict serve an important organizational
purpose insofar as they establish a ranking or pecking order among social
animals inhabiting areas with potentially limiting resources. By participating
in a ranking order, group members learn from victory and defeat who their
superiors and inferiors are.
Do ritualized aggression and lethal conflict serve similar functions
among humans? Alcock (1978), an evolutionary biologist, concludes that
most threatening or violent disputes are employed to resolve contested
ownership over scarce or potentially limiting resources. Eibl-Eibesfeldt
(1979), an ethologist, interprets intergroup aggression as a means of sorting
out territorial disputes or status in a ranking order. van den Berghe (1978), a
sociologist, sees primitive and early societal warfare as a rational means of
gaining livestock, women and slaves, gaining or keeping ie or gaining,
controlling, and exploiting new territory.
Among nations, Knorr (1966, 1977), a political scientist, argues that the
use of force is an ADeene mechanism by which competition among states is
resolved. Choucri and North (1975) demonstrate that much international
conflict is the result of the interactive effects of population and technology
demanding resources beyond national borders. And two military historians,
Wright (1935) and Gray (1974), conclude that warfare and arms races seek to
preserve solidarity under the status quo by augmenting nations’ influence,
prestige, and power over social and economic resources in the world
community.
Perhaps the most outstanding testimony that.modern.warfare-serves
accepted functions is its institutionalization — to the extent that it now
operates within a cadre of laws defining states of war and peace and
prescribes rules of conduct for each. Several military historians define war as
a legal condition which permits two.or more hostile groups to carry on
conflict by armed force. Emphasis on the term legal connotes societal
acceptance and approval (Wright 1935; Kennedy 1972; J. T. Johnson 1981).
Margaret Mead (1968) observes that modern warfare requires an organiza-
tion for killing, the willingness of individuals to die on behalf of other
members, the approval of individuals within the societies concerned, and an
agreement that it is a legitimate way of solving problems.
If we strip away the vagaries of different analytical approaches and
academic jargon, we find that most anthropologists, sociologists, historians,
economists, and political scientists agree that modern-day arms races,
Why This Study Matters
11

military threats, and use of violence by groups at various levels of

organization serve to enforce, protect, or extend power (for example,
Andreski 1968; von Clausewitz 1976; Garnett 1970; Blainey 1973; Ham-
mond 1975; Midlarsky 1975; Falger 1987). And, in this context, any
distinction between economic and political power is unreal. Every conflict
involves power, and power depends on control over scarce or potentially
limiting physical and nonphysical resources.

ULTIMATE VERSUS PROXIMATE CAUSES

So far, we have synthesized many studies indicating that intergroup warfare is

a frequent and widespread event and is used to gain control over potentially
limiting resources. It is underwritten by aggression with both anatomical and
neurochemical correlates. Such information is not sufficient, however, to
establish that humanity has a propensity for warfare. Nor is it sufficient to
produce a comprehensive theory of warfaring propensities. Fundamental
questions are still unresolved. What ultimate utilities have humans sought to
maximize when engaging in warfare? Why do individuals ultimately band
together, often along ethnic lines, in groups when waging war? What ever-
larger evolutionary process favored alliances of groups for competition/
warfare? What is the role of the brain, cognition, and conscious reflection in
all of this?
Such questions demand consideration of ultimate causes — the underly-
ing reasons for an activity existing in an animal’s repertoire of behaviors.
What is important from this viewpoint is not specific differences in a behavior
(for example, aggression) and its forms, but why that behavior exists at all. In
other words, what ultimate utility or payoff has a particular activity provided
for it to have been reinforced and retained throughout evolution?
It is important here to distinguish between ultimate and proximate
causes insofar as the latter focus specificallyon contemporary or immediate
stimuli which trigger an activity. For example, it has been established that
infants aged 6 to 18 months demonstrate a fear of strangers. A proximate
analysis would address events triggering the fear, such as a strange person
walking toward a baby. Ultimate analysis would ask whether the fear
response was innate and, if so, what factors influenced its evolution. (As it
happens, evidence has accumulated suggesting such behavior is innate. It is
called xenophobia and will be discussed further in chapter 4).
It is indeed unfortunate that most political scientists, sociologists, and
psychologists tend to be most familiar with proximate factors (causes and
 12 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

functions) involving cognitive, social, physical, and neurophysiological

stimulus events which surround and mediate conflict. Why is this so? One
reason is that the study of proximate factors allows more control, involves
less time, and is more convenient and inexpensive than.the comparative,
longitudinal, and genetic approaches required to shed light on ultimate
factors (Charlesworth 1986). Second, analysis of different kinds of proxi-
mate_causes..is.the--raison..d’étre._ for the different academic. disciplines
themselves. An interdisciplinary approach, on the other hand, attempts to
decode complex, ultimate structures involving the interaction of many
different kinds of variables. Notwithstanding the renewed importance
attached to interdisciplinary work, much ongoing research remains discipline
bound and is content with analysis of proximate causes. For instance, the
authors were shocked when the director of a school of international relations
suggested their work would not be taken seriously by political scientists
unless communicated in political science terminology, couched in political
science theory, and affiliated with a political science institute.
Yet another reason for neglect of ultimate factors is their close tie to
scientific traditions such as biology and behavioral ethology. Modes of
reasoning in evolutionary theory and population biology have remained
largely unfamiliar to social scientists. This point can be illustrated by the new
discipline sociobiology, a synthesis of ideas and data originating from several
life sciences. These include molecular biology, population biology, theoreti-
cal mathematical biology, evolutionary biology, primatology, ethology, and
ecology. Borrowing from Wind (1984), Figure 1.2 relates these and other
sciences to sociobiology. It also represents a crude attempt to order causes
leading to a particular class of behavior (for example, aggression) in Homo
sapiens and in nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees.
By.drawing-on.sociobiology, among other disciplines, we can advance a
“new _and more fundamental understanding..of-humanity’s-propensity for
warfare. The challenge is to discern how ultimate causes have interacted with
changing environments during evolution to produce sets of temporal,
proximate causes which, themselves, may operate in an ultimate or reinforc-
ing sense. Such reasoning does not employ sociobiology to suggest that
genetic determinism or a gene(s) for warfare exists. Rather, it is precisely this
emphasis on ultimate causality that leads us to identify and understand
important proximate causes which emerged in humanity’s early history to
reinforce propensities for warfare.
THE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
An evolutionary approach is essential to understanding humanity’s propen-
sity for warfare for one reason. Behavioral strategies to enhance biological
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 14 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

goals of survival, reproduction, and genetic fitness have not evolved

independently of humanity’s environment — they have coevolved. To
decipher the “deep structure” of warfare propensities it is thus crucial to bear
in mind that evolution always involves adaptation to past, not present,
environments. Moreover, most genetic evolution of human behavior has
occurred over a span of hundreds of thousands of years prior to civilization
(see Figure 1.3). This means that a legacy of aggression and lethal conflict has
adapted to serve humans for 99% of their existence. During the same period,
structures of the brain and processes of cognition that are attuned to
aggression/warfare have evolved.
Viewing the coevolution of genes, mind, and culture with this legacy in
mind suggests that the cultural explosion of modern times may not, as yet,
have fully taken on.alife.of.its own. Why? Because modern culture and many
of its uses may be constrained or guided by humanity’s evolutionary legacy
including adaptations which have evolved to serve previous environments.
Some of these formerly adaptive predispositions may well be maladaptive
today. As we shall see, merely recognizing this possibility is not likely to be
sufficient for their abandonment.
Repeating old and familiar questions, to what extent might formerly
adaptive predispositions be “hard wired” or ingrained in human behavioral
strategies? If humanity’s propensity for warfare is somehow hard-wired, how
might it be expressed psychologically and how might it be manifested in the
cultural and political fabric of contemporary society? Does this propensity
function covertly, disguised by more recent cultural mechanisms? The theory
developed in this volume provides new answers.

OUR THEORY IN BRIEF »

Given recent developments in evolutionary biology, sociobiology, anthropol-

ogy, and cognitive psychology, improved understanding of humanity’s
propensity for warfare is at hand. As such, this book.aims.to develop a
reasonably comprehensive theory which takes into account humanity’s
evolutionary past in order to help explain the present.
A “red line” throughout our theory is that the evolution of much
contemporary social behavior has originated during the past 1 to 2
millionyears when our ancestors lived in small, tight-knit kin groups. We call
these groups “nucleus ethnic groups.” Numbering approximately 100
individuals at most, a nucleus ethnic group comprises one’s offspring, one’s
siblings’ offspring, and one’s parents and their siblings and their offspring.
Why This Study Matters
15

FIGURE 1.3 Archaeological discoveries charting human evolution.

Data before
present (sp) in AMERICA
thousands of years and
0-- Present day AFRICA ASIA EUROPE AUSTRALIA
100+ Late . Homo sapiens
Pleistocene : Homo sapiens enters about
ain t ? |pe)
(Europe 40,000 years sp
Middle '
Pleistocene Homo erectus Homo erectus
500 | (China) (Germany and Hungary)
Evidence of fire Evidence of fire
700
First evidence of fire
sen fees olenié (Vallonet, France)
(Java)

1100 Early Homo erectus

Pleistocene (Kenya)
1300
Hand axes at
Olduvai (Bed Il)
1500 (Tanzania)
Pleistocene

Homo habilis Pliocene

at Olduvai (Bed |)
1900 with pebble tools

2100

2300
Earliest
2500 tools at
Hadar

2700
Pliocene

2900
3000

Earliest finds of
Australopithecus dated
3.5 million years BP
Reprinted with permission, from Bernard Campbell, Human Evolution, Third Edition (New
York: Aldine de Gruyter) Copyright © 1985 by Bernard Campbell.

as are reviewed about how nucleus ethnic groups came into

n, and how they came to engage in
erstanding functions and priorities of nucleus ethnic
 16 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

groups forms the basis for deciphering (1) how the past and present are linked
and (2) how forces of the past operate directly/indirectly, overtly/covertly in
warfaring propensities today. These forces help shape nationalism and
patriotism as contemporary expressions of humanity’s propensity for
warfare.
To put our theory to work, it is applied to a radical reinterpretation of(1)
causes of coups d’état in Africa, (2) the role.of nationalism as a means of
mobilization for conflict in ethnically homogeneous groups and societies, and
(3) the role of patriotism as a mobilization device in multi-ethnic societies. In
the case of African coups d’état, we show that ethnic. mobilization — as
described by our theory — is often central to understanding conflict and war
proneness. In the case of nationalism, it is used to explain the conflicts
involving Iran and Iraq, Israel and the Arab countries, and Afghanistan and
the USSR, as well as conflict and war proneness in pre-World War II Japan
and South Africa today. In the case of patriotism, we acknowledge that major
cultural and sociohistorical preconditions for nationalism (as a mobilizing
device for conflict) are simply not available to multiethnic societies. The
phenomenon of “patriotism,” however, fills the gap. Our theory explains
why this is so, and how it operates as a mobilization force for.out-group
enmity and warfare in multi-ethnic societies such as the United States and the
USSR.
Finally, we ask does peace have a chance? Of one thing the record is clear.
Traditional approaches to the study of war — as well as the vehicles for
reducing warfare, such as arms negotiations and peace marches — contain
little promise. Froman evolutionary perspective, these approaches are poorly
informed about key variables that perpetuate the aac example, to
understand war it is essential to decipher how one’s nucleus ethnicity
Sea, understand how people are mobilized for war, it is important to
examine how leaders appeal to nucleus ethnicity. Peace initiatives would have
"to, begin at the.grass-roots..level. of societal formation, cohesion, and
‘ mobilization as understood from.an.evolutionary perspective. At the very
least, peace efforts must take into consideration ethnocentrism as it is
communicated through school textbooks, nationalistic and patriotic pro-
gramming, and state policies fostering links between nucleus ethnicity and
general social welfare.
Lest_our intentions be misunderstood, it cannot be emphasized too
strongly that our theory is most.relevant to understanding central tendencies,
in humanity’s propensity for warfare. It does not presume to explain all wars.
It is, however, relevant to understanding war proneness and, therefore, has
something to say about.the.staying power of any society to wage war. A
society may wage war for.reasons not identified. by.our-theory, but the life
Why This Study Matters 17

expectancy of sucha waris likely tobe short-lived unless core elements of our
theory are present.
It is also important to realize that our theory.does not advocate that what
is typical of warfaring propensities today. ought.to.be. Nor does it embrace
any form of genetic reductionism. Although it suggests that warfare
propensities are deeply entrenched in human nature, the purpose of this book
is to decipher mechanisms.involved and provide clues for their possible
control.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES

egies
are adopted
Three organizational strat in view.of the complexity of this
subject, its _interdisciplinary..approach,..and.the vast amount of previous
inquiry. First, the four core elements of ourtheory are presented in building-
block fashion. Each element contains theoretical underpinnings, supporting
evidence, and connecting rationale. Chapters 2 and 3 in part I of the book
introduce the first two-of these_building blocks which provide the ultimate,
evolutionary underpinnings of our theory. For the technically oriented
reader, an appendix to chapters 2 and 3 (Appendix I) shows how under-
pinnings can be combined with a_traditional cost-benefit framework to
model aspects of intergroup conflict involving nucleus ethnic groups. Part II
of the book introduces the second two building blocks in chapters 4 and 5.
These provide the psychological underpinnings of our theory. At the
conclusion of chapter 5, and on reading our introduction to Part Ill, the
reader will be prepared to apply our theory to an analysis of African coups
d’état, nationalism, and patriotism in.chapters.6.and 7. Research and policy
considerations follow in Part IV, chapters 8.and 9.
Our second organizational strategy is to provide a formal statement of
assumptions in chapters 2—7. These are intended to summarize, logically and
systematically, the underpinnings of each building block in our theory or
their application to case studies. For most readers they will be useful when
reviewing our theory in its entirety. They can be strung together across
chapters as a means of extracting key ingredients. For readers inclined to
interpret our theory relative to their own research findings, a formal
statement of assumptions can be used as a target of hypothesis testing and
debate.
The third strategy is to develop our theory in chapters 2—7 with a
minimum of critical reflection in the interests of maximizing coherence. At
the same time, however, presentation of a new theory without considering
18 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

alternatives deprives readers of a full appreciation of differences between the

old and new. Accordingly, we fill out our theory by developing nine
propositions. These appear in chapter 8 and have two functions. They clarify
our position on many contemporary, often superficial, competing interpreta-
tions of warfare. These involve the military—industrial complex, arms races,
Marxism or communism as solutions to military conflict, the role of women
versus men in warfare, the paradox of moral restraints in war, the impotency
of religion, and so on. These propositions also constitute an agenda for
further research and hypothesis testing.
A major organizational strategy implicit in our theory itself is that it
provides a framework or crude blueprint for reorganizing a vast amount of
material on warfare — much of which is contradictory. It advocates a
reinterpretation of many empirical studies by anthropologists, sociologists,
psychologists, and especially political scientists. In addition, it places existing
policy on trial for its neglect of key variables in humanity’s propensity for
warfare.

NOTES

1. Singer presented a Cecil Green Lecture at the University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, in 1982.
2. Estimates provided in Figure 1.1 are crude insofar as they represent global averages and
derive from sources that do not pretend to be comprehensive in methodology or coverage.
Estimates of official development assistance are published annually by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development in Development Cooperation. Estimates of outstand-
ing less developed country debt were obtained from the World Bank’s yearly publication World
Debt Tables. Estimates of military expenditures were obtained from Ruth Sivard’s annual World
Military and Social Expenditures, published by World Priorities. Cost estimates to implement
United Nations’ World Plans of Action and related undertakings derive from a mixed bag of
official and unofficial estimates. The programs involved and activities requiring funding include
(1) the World Plan of Action in the health sector, which seeks to eradicate smallpox, malaria, and
trypanosomiasis and introduce vector control, nutrition research,
and development, (2) the U.N.
Global Water Conference and goals to alleviate sickness of 1 billion. people due to water
impurity, (3) the World Population Plan of Action and goals to provide family planning services
within maternal and child care, data collection, research, and so on, (4) the World Food Program
and aims to cover food shortages in less developed countries that will not be met by domestic
production or imports, (5) the World Plan of Action for HABITAT and goals to provide cheapest
dwelling units (excluding land) for the poorest 50% of the population in less developed countries
and poorest 25% of the population in developed countries, and (6) U.N. Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) literacy goals to provide functional literacy to
populations of less developed countries.
3. According to political scientist Alva Myrdal (1976), annual worldwide military
expenditures are roughly equivalent to the combined annual incomes of poor countries which
Why This Study Matters 19

comprise more than one-half of the world’s population. Since 1985 they surpassed $600 billion
annually, thus exceeding worldwide expenditures on health or education.
PART I

Ultimate Evolutionary
Strategies: An Overview
Humanity’s propensity for warfare does not originate from a single, simple,
reductionistic cause. Itstems from several factors interacting over long
periods of evolutionary time. These involve genetic strategies, environmental
forces, mental development, and the development of culture. Our concern in
part of this book is to examine two of these. One is in the domain of genetic
strategies and assumes “‘ultimate”’ causal relevance in our theory. The other is
in the domain of environmental forces and is an emergent, reinforcing,
proximate cause in our theory. From an evolutionary perspective, both of
these causes constitute seedsofhumanity’s propensity for warfare.
The term propensity implies that modern Homo sapiens have brought
“something” with them in the makeup of their nature, that it has functional,
adaptive, and_ rational underpinnings,..and..that.its_ expression will be
influenced by environmental.stimuli..Our goal in chapters 2 and 3 is to
stimulate readers to question (1) the waysin which ultimate behavioral
strategies have given rise to cooperation and conflict, (2).effects.of humanity’s
past onthe direction of sociality, and (3) how peace evolved within groups
while hostilities were continuously directed at_out-groups.. Because. they
concern the legacy of humanity’s evolutionary past, such questions are
essential to understanding warfaring propensities today.
Chapters 2 and 3 contain only part of our theory, but can be used to
extend previous models which have attempted to account for a very
important kind of intergroup conflict — that involving ethnic groups. We do
so in Appendix I. For those not technically oriented, the essential ideas in
Appendix I can be extracted from its introduction and conclusion.
The value of the appendix is that it shows how our approach can be
integrated with a very large literature on ethnic conflict, how death can be
tolerated in situations of conflict/warfare when inclusive fitness is taken into
consideration, and how mental processes in existing conflict models tend to
be treated superficially. This sets the stage for discussing the psychology of
warfaring propensities in chapters 4 and 5.
 asi
F Maye
 CHAPTER 9

Inclusive Fitness B owd

and In-Group Amity
When in doubt about
ultimate causes, go to
the primitives.
[lain Prattis, anthropologist]

INTRODUCTION

The idea of studying “primitive” warfare is not likely to appeal to those

concerned with arms races, Star Wars, or the military—industrial complex. To
most analysts, primitives are worlds apart, connected to modern warfare only
by the fact they are human. But if “human nature” is somehow at the root of
humanity’s propensity for warfare, then surely primitives have something to
teach us. The subject of this chapter, a new theoretical perspective being
tested by anthropologists, certainly suggests so. Their findings are having a
profound effect on our understanding of ultimate behavioral strategies which
underlie cooperation versus conflict,
% Consider an example of fighting among a particularly violent tribe, the
‘ Yanomamo of southern Venezuela:

The fight had clearly escalated, and large numbers of men began arming
themselves with clubs and other weapons. Mohesiwa’s younger brother,
Tourawa, again came to his rescue, discarding his club, taking up first a machete
and then an ax. He attacked Kebowa from the blind side and managed to deliver a
series of equally crunching blows to Kebowa’s legs, arms, and back with the blunt
side of his ax. Stunned and distracted — and in pain from the blows — Kebowa
stopped beating Mohesiwa and turned to identify his new adversary. Tourawa
backed away a few steps and menacingly turned his ax head up, as if to strike
Kebowa on the head with the sharp edge. As he stood there, poised to strike,
someone reached up and grabbed his ax-handle from behind him, twisted it so as
to turn the sharp edge back down, and dragged him out of the fight. The youth
turned to struggle for control of his ax, but as soon as his back was turned,
24 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Kebowa rushed him from behind and delivered an overhead blow with his ax,
blunt side exposed, striking him squarely in the middle of the back between his
shoulder blades, just missing his spine. The sound of Kebowa’s ax thudding into
Tourawa’s back was sickening, and the youth collapsed instantly. [Chagnon and
Bugos 1979, 220]

It has been well established that such conflicts among the Yanomamo
arise over marriage exchange obligations or contested ownership of
resources. But there is a far more provocative issue involved. It concerns why
and how individual Yanomamo warriors form alliances. Why does warrior A
join anybody at all when his own life is at stake? Contemporary analyses of
intergroup warfare by anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scien-
tists are seldom concerned with such questions. Yet, they are fundamental to
the study of all war for two reasons. First, all definitions of warfare imply that
conflict involves.a group. Second, group formation requires altruism and
cooperation among individuals. But what are the origins of altruism and
cooperation, and what is their intended purpose? These questions are
essential to understanding humanity’s propensity for warfare because they
examine the social cement that allows and motivates individuals to cooperate
for intergroup conflict. Without this social cement, cooperation for conflict
would be limited, groups would not likely exist, and the phenomena of
intergroup warfare would be eliminated.
Consider how a traditional anthropologist might explain cooperation
between warriors A and B. Most likely he or she would point to bonds of
kinship in facilitating alliances for warfare)among hunter—gatherer bands,
primitive tribes, and chiefdoms. But in doing so, many anthropologists treat
kinship and ethnicity as given. They tend to use these terms as criterion of
group membership, whereby group members happen to be those who interact
enough to transmit culture to one another, or who are different in beliefs and
practice from non kin and, thus, disposed to conflict. As Daly and Wilson
(1982) put it, this is an extremely impoverished view of kinship. As we shall
see, it ignores the evolutionary model of humanity which prescribes a far
more ultimate reason for observed kinship bonds, self-sacrifice in kin-related
conflict, and the origin of groups per se.
A traditional economist:would rationalize alliances quite differently. He
or she would awkwardly try to reconcile a fundamental economic premise
that individuals are motivated to maximize their own self- interest first and
foremost with the reality of cooperation between two or more individuals.
Recall that the greatest cost individual A faces when joining B in lethal
conflict is death. To justify such action, the economist must show that
anticipated benefits of conflict were truly monumental. Yet potential benefits
of conflict — as tallied by economists — are seldom, if ever, expected to be
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 25

such. Is the economist then to conclude that sacrifice to the death is a largely
irrational act in warfare? Economists have little to say on this subject because
the ultimate reasons for nepotistic altruism and kin-directed sociality are
almost entirely absent in their theoretical tradition.
Finally, consider how a traditional sociologist might explain such an
alliance? Sociologists would likely invoke the premise that altruism is simply
taught and learned because it is functional to living in groups. Alliances form
because social learning involving friends and kin demand them. Yet to
assume that individual A would fight to the death for another individual, or
for the good of his or her group, implies a level of true altruism that has never
been adequately explained by sociology. At best, some social scientists have .
invoked “group selection theory” (GST). GST maintains that a group whose
members willingly deny their own self-interest, or place themselves at risk for ©
thebenefitof the group, are less likely to become extinct than rival groups (
whose_members consistently put their own selfish interest first. Wynne- )
Edwards (1962, 141), a zoologist, pushed group selection theory to a new
height in his study of the social behavior of animal populations. In the case of
social group character he claimed, “what is passed from parents to offspring
is the mechanism, in each individual, to respond correctly in the interests of
the community — not in their own individual interest.”
The problem with GST is that it bypasses the competitive process at the
heart of natural selection; it transcends and subordinates individual interests
to the good of the group. Evolutionary biologists have shown that this simply
does not fit the facts (Shapiro 1978), and they have been instrumental, along
with most zoologists, in discrediting group selection theory (Boorman and
Levitt 1980; Fry 1980). By adopting GST, sociologists overemphasize true
altruism while economists overemphasize self-interest. Both miss the point.
The point is this: To explain why an individual would jeopardize his or
her life to help other individuals, the obvious dichotomies of self-interest and
altruism must be reconciled. This requires an understanding of the ultimate
utilities that individuals seek to maximize: What fundamental benefit do

starting point of a meaningful theory of warfare.

This chapter provides a rationale for apparent altruism within groups. It
begins by introducing the sociobiological concepts of inclusive fitness and kin
selection. As we shall see, kin selection theory has been used successfully to
explain alliances and sacrificial altruism among Yanomamo warriors. In
doing so, it helps fill an important theoretical gap in the social sciences and
embodies the first building block in our theory of humanity’s propensity for
warfare.
 26 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

“INCLUSIVE FITNESS >

Inclusive fitness addresses the origins of altruism and, thus, the essential
components of sociality. The origin of true altruism has long been a central
theoretical problem for evolutionary biologists because it is commonly
defined_as.a. behavioral exchange. between individuals A and B which
absolutely.or potentially.subtracts from the resources of A while benefiting B.
In a world where competition between individuals for scarce resources and
maximization of self-interest is surely rewarded, indiscriminate altruism
would seem foolish. Those practicing it without regard to the costs involved
would probably find themselves exploited and their resources depleted to the
extent that they, themselves, might face extinction.
That sacrificial altruism does exist in social insects, other nonhuman
animals, and humans implies that maximization of self-interest cannot be
defined solely in terms of an individual organism’s wants and needs. Indeed,
the prevalence of altruism, particularly toward kin, has required a whole
rethinking of traditional notions of survival of the fittest in the biological
sciences. This has resulted in a growing conviction that natural selection does
not ultimately operate on the individual. That is, the number of offspring and
the spreading of genetically determined, one traits, does not result
solely from competition between individuals of differing ERE Nor does it
result from competition and the differing. fitness of groups. Rather, selection
appears.operative.on.a molecular level— on that.of the genes..What does this
mean?
Evolutionary implications of selection operating on genes were first laid
out in the seminal work of Hamilton'(19635:1964):-Hamilton ‘acknowledged
that.natural. selection favorss_ fundamentally : self-oriented behavior in the
sense that.it encourages iindividuals of any species to maximize their “genetic
fitness.” But he went on to show that. genetic fitness has not one but two basic
components. to.be.maximized. The firstis increased. personal survival and
increased personal.reproduction (classical ]Darwinian fitness). The second is
the enhanced.reproduction and survival of close relatives who share the same
genes..by...common--descent (a kinship component). This means that an
individual’s total impact on evolution, via transmission of genes to a
subsequent gene pool, involves a combined measure of his or her direct
(personal) plus indirect (relatives) contribution of genes.
~y On joining these components, Hamilton coined the-term.. inclusive
fitness,.which-he-defined.as-follows:

Inclusive fitness= Personal fitness + Kinship component

Inclusive..fitness-thus--equals-an~individual’s..Darwinian_(egoistic)_ oon
fitness
 Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity yy

augmented by anallowance
for.the effect that-theindividualcan have on the 5
reproductive success.of those-who shareidentical-genes:by-common.-descent Sa
Inclusive fitness differs from traditional notions of survival of the fittest
in two respects (Masters 1983). First, accordingto inclusive fitness, natural
selection favors the ability of individuals to.transmit their genes to posterity.
Fitness is thus measured by this ability rather than fitness in terms of health,
strength, beauty, or other physical traits. Second, an organisms’s tichasive
fitness_ can be increased by assisting others who are genetically. related
_-({nepotism). It is in this later.component that_an_ ultimate explanation. for
allegiances and. sacrificial altruism — and, thus, the origins of sociality — can
be found.

‘KIN SELECTION)
When focusing on nepotistic altruism and its effect on inclusive fitness,
evolutionary biologists typically speak of kin selection (Maynard-Smith
1964; Kurland 1980). Kin selection has formidable implications for antic-
ipating origins of cooperation and conflict among.early.man..Jt implies that
assistance, favors or altruism would be directed at individuals who were
genetically related enough to give the common gene pool greater survival
advantages. Genetic relatedness would be greatest with members of one’s
lineage and one’s own kin or nucleus ethnic group. It would be less between
members of neighboring groups, less again between members of groups even
farther removed from each other, and so on. As the degree of genetic related-
ness declines, we would expect offerings of altruistic or socially cooperative
acts to decline as well. Indeed, we might expect zero cooperation or blatant
aggression to be directed toward strangers (Reynolds 1980a).
This sequence has been schematized by Alexander (1979) and is shown in
Figure 2.1. In the lower left quadrant, the effectiveness of kin selection in
determining altruism (or “generalized reciprocity” in Alexander’s terms), is
greater among members of one’s “house.” It is less at the village level, tribal
level, and so on. Observe also that failure to reciprocate, or cheating, pays less
at the house level because genetic relatedness is greatest and interactions are
more likely to be repeated. Conversely, cheating is more prevalent among
nonrelatives. In this case, cheating does not produce detrimental effects on
kin and, thus, a subsequent lowering of the cheater’s inclusive fitness.
Cheating in such instances can range from simple theft of food to refusal to
reciprocate assistance should a distant relative or nonrelative be attacked by
outsiders.
 28 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

FIGURE 2.1 Altruism and variations in genetic relatedness. Adapted from Alexander (1975).

Intertribal sector

Fribal sector

Village sector

Lineage sector

Effectiveness of kin selection Generalized Balanced Negative

reciprocity reciprocity reciprocity

An Implied Behavioral Strategy

The relationship between genes, natural selection and kin selectio

n can now
be summarized in five basic assumptions: ;
Assumption 2.1. The unit of natural selection is the gene,
not the
individual or group.
Assumption 2.2. Successful evolution is about genes maximizing
copies
of themselves, about increasing their representation in the
“gene pool of
humanity.”
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 29

Assumption 2.3. All genes, regardless of their potential contribution to

their carrier’s behavioral and phenotypic traits, strive to maximize their own
reproductive success.
Assumption 2.4. Genes which contribute most to their representation in
the gene pool (via enhanced survival and reproduction of their individual
carriers) are selected to exist in future generations over those which
contribute relatively less.
Assumption 2.5. Individual carriers of genes (organisms) are sometimes
related. This means that the probability that individuals X and Y carry
identical genes (that is, the same allele at an identical locus on the
chromosome) is higher than were they not related. Therefore, survival of
individual Y increases chances that a gene shared with X will survive and
reproduce as well.
These assumptions imply that kin selection gives rise to a behavioral
strategy, one which greatly influences the probability of altruism between
two individuals. Indeed, mathematical formulas are now available to
establish genetic “‘payoffs” for sacrificial altruism. As a crude illustration,
suppose individual A is a father with one child. He saves one brother’s life and
helps his sister rear two nephews to the age of reproduction. What is the
genetic payoff to his altruism? Assuming he incurred no costs from his
altruism, we would first need to estimate the degrees of genetic relatedness
between himself and his sister (a full sibling) and his two nephews (half-
siblings). These are reported in Table 2.1 as coefficients of relatedness and are
generalizable to all individuals.
The next step is to calculate his total inclusive fitness — that portion
deriving from his own reproductive success (personal fitness) plus that
component comprising his assistance to his brother’s and his sister’s offspring
(kinship component). Example 1 in Table 2.1 provides the relevant calcula-
tion. Observe that A’s altruistic acts contribute more to his inclusive fitness
than does his own reproduction and parenting of only one offspring. This
leads to an extremely provocative implication, which is stated in Table 2.1: If
a choice is necessary, it may be in A’s interest to save his brothers and assist his
nephews at the expense of loss of one of his own offspring because his
inclusive fitness may more than compensate the “genetic loss.”
Of course, costs are almost always involved in altruistic acts. They may
be substantial, so substantial as to decrease the effectiveness of kin selection
in determining the likelihood of altruism. For example, a father may give food
to starving neighbors, but limits will be imposed on his sharing should
malnourishment threaten his offspring. A decision rule is thus required to
incorporate genetic relatedness — as one argument for altruism — with costs
and benefits incurred in performing an altruistic act. The most widely used
30 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

and corroborated decision rule has been developed by Hamilton (1963,

1964).1 It expresses the probability of an altruistic act occurring between two
individuals, X and Y. This probability is calculated in terms of the cost of
TABLE 2.1
Coefficients of Relatedness of Selected Relatives and Inclusive Fitness

Relationship Coefficient of Relationship Coefficient of

relatedness (k) relatedness (k)
Parent—offspring 0.5 Full siblings 0.5
Uncle—nephew 0.25 Half siblings? 0.25
Aunt-—niece 0.25 Grandparent—grandchild 0.25
Cousins 0.125

Inclusive fitness = personal fitness + kinship component

Personal fitness = kX number of surviving offspring personally produced by the
individual
Kinship component = _& X number of surviving relatives that effects (benefits) of the
individual helped produce or keep alive

Rule 1. The degree of relatedness is measured by the conditional probability that individual Y
has an allele identical to that of X on the same locus of the chromosome
Rule 2. Benefits are measured in terms of the effects that an altruistic act by X will have on the
chances of producing more offspring by Y; costs of the altruistic act are measured in
terms of reduced reproductive potential of X due to his/her allocation of help involving
time, energy, material resources, or self-sacrificial behavior such as defending another
against a predator

Example 1. Individual has one surviving offspring, saves one full brother’s life, and helps his
sister rear two nephews to the age of reproduction
Inclusive fitness = Personal fitness + kinship component
= (0.5 x 1) + [(0.5 x 1) + (0.25 x 2)] = 1.5
Example 2. Individual X has one surviving offspring, saves two full brothers’ lives, and helps his
sister rear three nephews to the age of reproduction
Inclusive fitness = (0.5 x 1) + (0.5 x 2) + (0.25 x 3) = 2.25
Implication. If a choice is necessary, it may be in X’s interest to save his brothers and assist his
nephews at the expense of the loss of one of his own offspring because his inclusive
fitness may more than compensate the genetic loss

Note: a, Half-siblings are brothers and sisters that have only one parent in common.
Source: Adapted from Alcock (1984).

altruism to individual X, the benefit of altruism to Y, and the degree or

coefficient of relatedness. Altruism will be favored in individual X if the
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 31

coefficient of relatedness is greater than the ratio of his or her cost to

individual Y’s benefit. In other words, the inclusive fitness benefits must
outweigh the potential costs of an altruistic act.

Summing Up

Kin selection isa fundamental building block in our theory because, along
with behavioral ethology, it contributes to explanations for (1) altruism
usually being shown toward kin, (2) evolving sociality among the earliest
Homo. sapiens living in tight-knit kin groups (nucleus ethnic groups), and,
most important, (3) central tendencies of nepotistic altruism over true
altruism.2 Kin selection implies that sexual organisms, such as humans, have
evolved not only to be egoistic but to be fundamentally nepotistically
altruistic.(Flinn and Alexander 1982).
Inclusive fitness and, more specifically, kin selection also provide an
ultimate, evolutionary rationale for anticipating origins of “self-sacrifice to
the death.” As individuals are motivated to maximize their inclusive fitness
rather than personal survival and reproduction alone, sacrifice to the death
can still have a genetic payoff; it can enhance reproduction and survival of
close relatives who share the same genes by common descent. That is, an
individual’s genes — the units of natural selection — can still be propagated
even though personal fitness is lost in the process. Although sacrifice to the
death is an extremely complex phenomenon in primitive (let alone contempo-
rary) warfare, it is surprising how many analysts and theories of conflict
avoid the subject. Inclusive fitness and kin selection allow us to confront this
problem head on, as we shall do several times throughout this book.

THE EMPIRICAL RECORD

Inclusive fitness.and kin selection theory have led to.a.revolution in thinking

n
about the evolution of social behavior. By clarifying how natural selectio
inclusiv e fitness
can act on a gene through its effects on its bearer’s relatives,
(Grafen
took hold by 1977 as the central theorem of behavioral biology
not tie into the
1982; Wind 1984). Though originally inclusive fitness did
rated by
main body of population genetics, it has now been demonst
approac h, and by
Charlesworth (1980), using a simple population genetics
(1985) using the
Michod and Hamilton (1980), Seger (1981) and Morgan
has also been
selection mathematics of Price (1970). Inclusive fitness
 32 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

demonstrated as an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). This means that it

would not likely be easily displaced by competing “behavioral strategies”
(that is, pure selfishness or unrestrained altruism) because of its superiority in
maximizing reproduction and survival throughout evolution (Breuer 1982;
von Schilcher and Tennant 1984).
Turning to empirical studies, kin selection theory has made an import
contribution to understanding cooperation, conflict, and self-saczificial
behavior. Studies involving the behavior of social insects and other nonhu-
man animals have amassed a great deal of evidence consistent with
predictions of inclusive fitness (Wilson 1975; Kurland 1980; Barash 1982;
Ruse 1982; Rushton et al. 1984; Fletcher and Michener 1987).
Perhaps the most vivid examples of self-sacrificial behavior are to be
found in termite colonies. Wilson (1979), an authority on social insects,
describes the soldier caste of the African termite, Globitermes sulfureus, as
walking bombs. ‘‘When they attack ants and other enemies, they eject a
yellow glandular secretion through their mouths; it congeals in the air and
often fatally entangles both the soldiers and their antagonists. The spray
appears to be powered by contractions of the muscles in the abdominal wall.
Sometimes the contractions become so violent that the abdomen and gland
explode, spraying the defensive fluid in all directions” (Wilson 1979, 159).
How can this self-sacrificial behavior persist? The answer is that natural
selection has broadened to include kin selection. The self sacrificing termite
soldiers maximize their inclusive fitness by protecting the rest of the colony,
including its queen. His or her more fertile brothers and sisters flourish,
multiplying his or her genes by a greater production of nephews and nieces
(Wilson 1979).
As another example, consider the phenomenon. of infanticide among
lions. A pride of lions typically consists of one or two adult males, several
females, and their offspring. Solitary male lions who are not poo of
prides must gain possession of a pride to. reproduce. To do so, they must drive
rs off or kill the resident males. If they succeed, they will also kill the female’s
cubs. And if any of the females are pregnant, they will also kill the offspring
upon birth. Why? Because the new male’s inclusive fitness will be enhanced if
the_pride’s-food-resources..and_parenting are invested only in his.own
offspring-(Morris 1983).
By comparison, behavioral scientists have only begun to systematically
examine the relationship between the cultural and genetic bases of human
behavior. However, the number of studies bearing out predictions of kin
selection and inclusive fitness in human sociobiology are growing (Freedman
1979; Turke 1984; Dickman 1985; Flinn 1986). The utility of kin selection
theory for explaining nepotistic altruism is evidenced in the ethnographic
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 33

literature as reviewed by Essock-Vitale and McGuire (1980); in empirical

studies which test for effects of consanguinity on conflict or resource sharing
by Hames (1979), Barkow (1982), Berte (1983), and Hughes (1984); and in
genetic studies involving monozygotic versus dizygotic twins by Segal (1984).
That inclusive fitness and kin selection are relevant to understanding
important features of warfare is purported by Durham (1976), Chagnon and
Bugos (1979), and Boone (1983).
To convey the flavor of existing evidence, the balance of this chapter
relates four examples. These include the application of kin selection theory to
Yanomamo axe fights described previously, a test of inclusive fitness theory
in primitive warfare, kin selection at work in intertribal feuding, and findings
of genetic similarity studies involving cooperation and conflict among twins.

Yanomamo Ax Fights

Fascinating accounts of the Yanomamo began with Chagnon’s publication of

Yanomamo: The Fierce People in 1968. Since that time Chagnon has written
extensively on the subject, but it was not until many years later that he
returned to reanalyze a 1971 ax fight from a sociobiological perspective. As
he points out in an article coauthored with Bugos (Chagnon and Bugos 1979,
217)

The data required to make the following analysis were collected long before
“sociobiology” entered the theoretical repertoire of social anthropologists and,
therefore, could not have been systematically gathered with kin selection or
reciprocal altruism arguments in mind. Two consequences of this fact should be
obvious. First, it is not likely that the information systematically favors or
disfavors the outcome of tests of kin selection theory. Second, had the data been
collected with tests of kin selection in mind, it is likely that the definitiveness of
our conclusions would be enhanced, for no one is more painfully aware of the
the
kinds of supplementary detail necessary to make convincing statements about
applicabilit y of kin selection theory to human kinship behavior than we.

The hypothesis tested was that if an individual sustains the same costs to
or
his or her personal fitness in helping (1) a close friend, (2) a distant relative,
served by
(3) a nonrelative, then his or her inclusive fitness would be better
thus
aiding the relative most genetically related. Chagnon and Bugos
closer relatives
examined evidence to determine whether individuals helped
Yanomamo
over more distant ones. On constructing genealogies of the
to members of
warriors involved, they found that main fighters were related
equivalent
their own “team” at the level of r= .212 (they were approximately
34 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

to half-siblings) and were related to the opposition at r = .066 (approx-

imately cousins once removed). The authors conclude

It is clear that closeness of relationship measured genealogically serves as a

mediator of interpersonal behavior in the conflict situation under discussion.
Members of the group that supported Mohesiwa in the fight are not a random set
of individuals from the village and, to the extent that the genealogical data are an
accurate reflection of biological relatedness among them, their participation in
the fight can legitimately be seen as having considerable relevance to kin selection
theory. Contrary to the extravagant claim made by Marshall Sahlins “... no
system of human kinship relations is organized in accord with the genetic
coefficients of relationship as known to sociobiologists” (1976: 57), there is good
reason to believe that additional research will reveal similar patterns in other
human societies.

Additional evidence refuting Sahlins’ alternative interpretation has been

presented by Silk (1980) and Daly and Wilson (1982).

Primitive Warfare

Durham (1976) evaluates the possible adaptive significance of intergroup

aggression. He proposes that group-level aggression, in the form of warfare,
is particularly appropriate for his analysis because it is often considered
dysfunctional from a participant’s point of view. If it can be shown that
warfare generally has net inclusive fitness benefits for the individuals
involved, despite its high individual cost, then other less costly forms of
human aggressive behavior may also prove to be adaptive in the same way.
He sets out to test three hypotheses.
Hypothesis A: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by the
selective retention of traits that enhance the inclusive fitness of individual
human beings. These people fight wars when they stand to gain individually
and in terms of their reproductive success. When group A is victorious over
group B, individual participants in A generally derive a net inclusive fitness
benefit within the larger population. Despite appearances, warfare may thus
be but one example that cultural practices are generally adaptive in a
Darwinian sense.
Hypothesis B: Cultural traditions of warfare in primitive societies
evolved independently of the ability of human beings to survive and
reproduce. These people fight wars for various and sundry cultural reasons
which have no consistent relation to the notion of inclusive fitness. This
particular form of human social behavior is not well explained by sociobiol-
ogy’s principles: It is better understood as a “purely cultural” phenomenon in
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 35

terms of social organization and political organization which themselves

have nothing to do with fitness.
Hypothesis C: Cultural traditions of primitive warfare evolved by some
process of group selection which commonly favored the altruistic tendencies
of some warriors. These people fight wars for the good of the group and do
not, therefore, expect net benefits for themselves and their kin. When all
direct and indirect benefits are considered, some individuals do regularly lose
more than they gain in intergroup aggression. Human aggression is,
therefore, a good example that cultural practices need not be adaptive in the
normal Darwinian sense.
To test these hypotheses, Durham uses empirical data on intertribal
aggression involving the Mundurucu of Brazil and the Tsembaga Maring of
New Guinea. He finds, for example, that Mundurucu head-hunting had
compensating fitness advantages for individual warriors and their families.
For example, it reduced or drove away competitors from scarce game and,
thus, increased food supplies. On balance, he concludes that warfare
involving both these tribes is not adequately explained by hypotheses B and C
but, rather, is consistent with hypothesis A. From his stance, primitive
warfare is but one example that cultural practices may be generally adaptive
insofar as they have contributed to inclusive fitness.

Intertribal Feuding

Also persuasive in illustrating inclusive fitness are studies by Otterbein and

Otterbein (1965) and Otterbein (1968) on intergroup feuding and intersocie-
tal war. They test the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis I. Intergroup feuding will be more prevalent in patrilineal
than in matrilineal societies.
Hypothesis II. Intergroup feuding will be even more prevalent in
patrilineal societies where polygyny is present.
In patrilineal societies related males and their offspring live in close
proximity to one another. Conversely, in matrilineal societies male lineages
to
tend to be dispersed geographically. Patrilineal societies thus give rise
comparatively high levels of genetic relatedness among fraternal interest
groups. Fraternal interest groups are defined by Otterbein as power groups,
of
composed of related males, which resort to aggression when the interests
fitness considera tions
their members are threatened. Put differently, inclusive
societies,
would strongly prevail in aggressive group behavior of patrilineal
less so in matrilineal societies.
societies
Evidence on intertribal feuding in patrilineal versus matrilineal
societie s in the Human
is based on a sample of 50 societies drawn from 124
36 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Relations Area Files and Ethnographic Atlas. Presented by means of cross-

tabulations and y2 tests (as in Table 2.2), Otterbein reports greater
feuding in patrilineal than matrilineal societies. Hypothesis I is thus
confirmed.
TABLE 2.2
Internal Conflict in Patrilineal versus Matrilineal Societies

Nonpeaceful Peaceful Total

Matrilocal 5 18 23
Patrilocal 26 2 28

Totals Sil 20 51

Notes: © = .73, x2 = 26.80, p < .001

Source: Otterbein (1965)

The relevance of polygyny to feuding (hypothesis II) is that it usually

produces a situation in which half-brothers live near each other. Thus, in
patrilineal societies it reinforces fraternal interest groups as well as inclusive
fitness considerations because males live surrounded by male kinsmen who
help in work and war and to whon,, in turn, a kinsman is similarly obliged.
Table 2.3 confirms that polygyny plays a role in the likelihood of feuding as
well, thus confirming hypothesis II.

TABLE 2.3
Feuding in Patrilineal versus Matrilineal Societies

Feuding
Frequent or
infrequent Absent Total
Both polygyny and
patrilocality i 4 15
Either polygyny or
patrilocality 6 10 16
Neither polygyny nor
patrilocality 5 14 19

Totals 22 28 : 50

Notes: x? total = 8.53, .01 < p < .02, df = 2; x? linear = 7.26, p < .01, df = 1; x? residual =
1.27, not significant, df = 1.
Source: Otterbein (1965).

Otterbein’s findings have been corroborated in a recent study by Ross

Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 37

(1986). Employing ethnographic reports on 90 societies, Ross tests for effects

of fraternal interest groups, polygyny, and matrilocal residence using
multiple regression analysis; of 11 independent variables examined, only 4
emerged as having statistically significant, positive effects on internal conflict
(at the .05 level or better).3 The existence of fraternal interest groups was one
of these. The presence of polygyny also had the expected positive effect,
although it was not statistically significant.

Twin Studies

For almost a decade, researchers anxiously awaited findings of the ““Min-

nesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.” The publication of Bouchard and
McGue’s (1981) work on familial studies of intelligence and Segal’s (1984)
work on cooperation, competition, and altruism have produced impressive
support for kin selection theory. Segal tests two hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1. Altruistic behavior between monozygotic (MZ) twins
should be maximal since their coefficient of relatedness equals one. MZ twins
thus share 100% of their genes, or more appropriately, the conditional
probability that they share an identical allele at the same locus on any given
chromosome is 100%.
Hypothesis 2. MZ twins display greater evidence of personal sacrifice
(altruism) and willingness to work for the benefit of their twin partner than
dizygotic (DZ) twins who have a coefficient of relatedness of 0.5.
Segal’s findings reveal that cooperation and altruism are more evident in
MZ twins than in DZ twins. For example, using a series of games and tasks
specially designed to compare social relationships within genetically identical
and nonidentical twins, they observe that almost all MZ twins (94 percent)
completed cooperative tasks successfully versus 46 percent of DZ pairs.
Other studies reveal that MZ twins are about twice as likely to share a
crime,
wide range of additional traits than are DZ twins. These include adult
s, neuroses , schizo-
alcoholism, homosexuality, manic depressive psychosi
Rush-
phrenia, and argumentative dispositions (Loehlin and Nichols 1976;
degrees of
ton et al. 1985). Again, these findings are consistent with greater
genetic relationship, by a factor of two, between MZ twins.

KIN RECOGNITION
y genetically
Thus far, we have not considered exactly how individuals identif
ial altruism in
related people for purposes of forming alliances or sacrific
38 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

warfare. Do people actually go about calculating coefficients of genetic

relatedness? Do they merely behave as if they do? Or, are other mechanisms
involved? These crucial questions are taken up progressively in later chapters.
For the moment, we are concerned only with conveying evidence that
individuals behave as ifthey identify close kin. The as ifclause is familiar to all
social sciences because the intricate workings of the mind and cognition
remain poorly understood. Acknowledging this, we draw attention to
provocative kin recognition studies which imply that genetically related
social insects and animals are able to recognize one another, in some cases
with no previous association (Barash 1982; Rushton et al. 1984, 1985; Krebs
1985; Russell et al. 1985; Fletcher and Michener 1987).
The ability to detect genetic similarity exists in organisms such as frogs
(tadpoles), bees, birds, the deermouse, ground squirrels, and monkeys
(macaques) (Kurland 1980; Holldobler and Lindauer 1985; Blaustein and
O’Hara 1986). On the basis of this evidence, Rushton et al. (1984, 181)
conclude that “‘organisms have a tendency to detect other genetically similar
organisms and to exhibit altruistic behavior toward these ‘strangers,’ as well
as toward their own relatives. In order to pursue this general strategy, they
must, in effect, be able to detect copies of their genes in other organisma....
The cues will be necessarily phenotypic.”
Perhaps the most rigorous kin recognition study among nonhumans
concerns the ability of the sweat bee, Lasioglossum zephyrum, to discrimi-
nate between conspecifics of varying degrees of relatedness. They are able to
do so even though they have not previously met. Guard bees of this species
can effectively block the nest to prevent an intruder from entering. Greenberg
(1979) first bred bees for 14 different degrees of genealogical relationship
with each other. They were then introduced near nests that contained either
sisters, aunts, nieces, first cousins or more distantly related bees. The results
demonstrated a strong linear relationship between ability of these bees to pass
the guard bee and the degree of genetic relatedness (r = .93). In other words,
the greater the degree of genetic similarity, the less the likelihood an intruder
will be intercepted, if not killed.
Another example is Sherman’s (1981) work on ground squirrels. Tests
reveal that these animals can distinguish between littermates that are full
siblings (share the same father and mother) and those that are half-siblings
(share only a mother). As Krebs (1985) puts it, this would surely not have
been anticipated 12 years ago.
Parallel efforts to study innate recognition systems among humans are
only beginning to appear. Evidence suggesting that innate recognition may be
at work has been reported by Rushton and Russell (1985) and Russell et al.
(1985), but findings are highly tentative, incomplete, and debatable. Given
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 39

this fact, innate recognition per se does not play an explicit role in our theory.
Rather, we focus on mechanisms of kin recognition that are known to
operate, such as simple spatial proximity (where neighbors tend to be equated
with relatives), early experience (where littermates or nestmates tend to
recognize each other as kin), and phenotypic matching (where individuals
that resemble oneself tend to be identified as relatives) (Holmes and Sherman
1981; Wiison 1987).
Recognition systems are important to understanding the evolution of
nepotistic altruism because the learning capabilities of humans are as much
an expression of the species’ genetic makeup and potential as is the ability of
some animals to recognize kin without having had any previous experience
with them (Fletcher 1987). As we shall see in chapter 4, this learning potential
can take the form of “prepared learning,” a product of gene—culture
coevolution which has produced biases in mental development. These biases
give rise to economical rules of thumb whereby certain stimuli regarding kin
versus nonkin are perceived and remembered far more readily than others
(Wilson 1987). In chapter 5, we will show how directed learning has
produced recognition systems in more complex societies that contribute,
covertly, to in-group amity and out-group enmity even today.

A CAVEAT

Much of the empirical evidence reported thus far would not have been
anticipated a decade or so ago. Moreover, no study utilizing data from
humans to falsify a prediction from inclusive fitness or nepotism theory has
yet been published (Gray 1985).4 This suggests that inclusive fitness is not an
unreasonable building block in our theory and that it is at least consistent
with empirical evidence. It also suggests that opponents of sociobiology who
dismiss inclusive fitness on theoretical or empirical grounds are uninformed.
That existing evidence on inclusive fitness needs to be extended or
improved upon, however, goes without saying. Inclusive fitness and nepotism
theory are not only relatively new to the biological and social sciences, but
appropriate methodologies for data collection and hypothesis testing are only
beginning to be clarified. An extremely useful contribution in this respect has
been made by Gray (1985). He shows that almost all empirical studies of
nepotism theory — many of which are cited here — focus largely on
coefficients of relatedness as predictors of altruism, whereas specific costs
and benefits of altruistic acts tend to be poorly represented. [Recall that all
three terms (relatedness, costs, and benefits) are incorporated in Hamilton’s
40 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

equation.] The problems, as Gray points out, are that (1) costs and benefits of
individual behaviors are seldom included in existing data sets or are
extremely difficult and time consuming to measure, (2) available data on
costs and benefits are seldom, if ever, complete, (3) at present, it is not
possible to examine costs and benefits in the context of life history parameters
such as each individual’s reproductive potential, and (4) costs and benefits
should be disaggregated into those which are objective and real to partici-
pants versus those that are more loosely associated with proximate cues, as
perceived by the scientific investigator.
Employing these criteria, Gray concludes that empirical studies of
nepotism theory have yet to undertake a full or complete test. Rather, they
represent partial evaluations and can only be used to support the premise that
genetic relatedness ‘may play an important role in the direction of altruism
and, thus, the shaping of human social behavior. Nonetheless, his extensive
summary of the evidence is largely positive and supportive. He shows that
human sociobiologists have responded favorably to strong empirical attacks
by prominent critics such as Sahlins (1976) and Lewontin et al. (1984). And
he employs tough scientific criteria when discussing cost—benefit methodol-
ogy. The latter point is particularly relevant. However crude cost—benefit
methodology might be in sociobiological studies, the same kinds of problems
plague empirical testing of cost—benefit models in economics, psychology and
political science. In economics, for example, many assumptions in cost—
benefit modeling stem from the so-called neoclassical synthesis of Keynesian
and pre-Keynesian theories. Though none of the assumptions can be mea-
sured or validated in precise empirical terms, the utility of such theories for
tracking major components of economic behavior cannot be denied.

CONCLUSION

Inclusive fitness and kin selection assume ultimate causal status in our theory
for several reasons. They focus on reproduction and survival of the basic unit
of natural selection, the gene, rather than the individual or group. They
address behavioral strategies in which genes maximize copies of themselves
among social species all along the phylogenetic scale including social insects,
nonhuman social primates, and humans. They address fundamental reasons
for the evolution of altruism, cooperation, and, thus, sociality among
genetically related individuals during early humanity. And finally, inclusive
fitness and kin selection are equally relevant to understanding the prime
mover of altruism and cooperation among genetically related individuals
today. pers
Inclusive Fitness and In-Group Amity 41

Providing an ultimate, evolutionary rationale for cooperation and

sociality among genetically related individuals also provides an ultimate
rationale for anticipating origins of reduced cooperation among less related
individuals. If we polarize these behaviors and apply them to individuals in
two groups where intergroup genetic relatedness is low, we have a
fundamental reason to anticipate in-group amity and out-group enmity in the
early history of humanity.
However, inclusive fitness and kin selection theory represent only one
side of the evolutionary equation. The other _is_environment. Several
anthropologists and sociologists propose that nepotistic altruism, as well as
reduced cooperation or aggression toward strangers, would have been
reinforced under conditions of resource competition or stress (Fox 1975; van
den Berghe 1983a). Reynolds (1980a) and Reynolds et al. (1986) suggest that
a genetic predisposition resulting from evolution might have combined with a
psychological response to account for, say, territoriality, in-group amity/out-
group enmity, and intergroup conflict. Chapter 3 explores this possibility by
introducing our second theoretical building block, “groups as effective forces
of selection.”

NOTES

1. Employing cost-benefit terms, Hamilton’s decision rule for altruistic behavior can be
expressed formally as
0 < P(A)XY <1, if and only if CX/BY < k(XY)
Rearranging terms gives
(BY)(RXY) — CX > 0,
where
P(A)XY is the probability of an altruistic act between two individuals X and Y; CX is the cost of
the altruistic act to individual X; BY is the benefit of the altruistic act to Y, and k is the coefficient
of relatedness.
2. Assuming nepotism is at one end of the “‘altruism continuum” and true altruism is at the
other, another kind of altruism, “reciprocal altruism,” would lie somewhere in between.
Reciprocal altruism is the subject of an important theoretical work by Trivers (1974, 1985) and
is used to link inclusive fitness with traditional cost-benefit analysis in social relations.
3. Other statistically significant variables are “‘strength of cross-cutting” ties, meaning
multiple loyalties among members of the same community and different communities in the
affection
society (a negative effect on conflict), greater use of child training practices fostering
effect), and harsher, more severe socialization processes (a positive
and security (a negative
the
effect). Ross also included a variable for matrilineal residence in the regression, producing
levels not statistically significant. Reasons for including matrilineal
expected negative effect at
would not only
residence in a multiple regression are not clear however. Removal of this variable
with the fraternal interest variable but boosted the coefficient
have eliminated multicollinearity
and significance on the later variable as well.
42 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

4. Vining (1986) claims to have done so in an article which examines social and
reproductive success from a sociobiological perspective. However, many invited comments on
the article discredit both his theoretical arguments as well as the adequacy of his data for
addressing the question.
 CHAPTER 3

Groups as Forces of Selection and

Out-Group Enmity
(“ Outside his group, a man’s life is in
danger, for he is then a stranger, and:
) stranger means enemy.
' [Maurice R. Davie 1929]

The force behind most warlike policies

is ethnocentrism.
[E. O. Wilson 1979]

INTRODUCTION

Maurice Davie’s marvelous book (1929) on the evolution and role of warfare
in early society gives so many accounts of out-group enmity that it seems the
natural order of things. He tells us that Australian natives invariably looked.
on strangers as deadly enemies and never neglected to massacre those who fell ¢
‘into their power. In Africa, strangers who came into the hands of the Ba- ,
Huana were killed and eaten. When Captain Cook discovered Savage Island,
he found it impossible to establish communication with the natives, who
came at him with “‘the ferocity of wild boars.” And when Turner later visited
the island, “armed crowds rushed down to kill him.” Even among the
relatively peaceful Eskimos, we are told that strangers are usually regarded
with some degree of suspicion and, in ancient times, were commonly put to
death.
Davie focuses on hostile sentiments between members of in-groups and
out-groups and how such attitudes led to intertribal warfare. Against
outsiders, he observes “it was meritorious to kill, plunder, practice blood
revenge, and steal women and slaves, but inside the group none of these
things could be allowed because they would produce discord and weakness.”
He identified a clear pattern involving two codes of morals, two sets of mores:
44 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

one for comrades inside and another for strangers outside, with both arising
from the same interests. Insiders frequently regarded themselves as “chosen
people,” outsiders as “barbarians.” In some instances, primitive tribes name
themselves “men,” meaning we alone are men, whereas outsiders are
something else, often not defined at all (Davie 1929; Wilson 1978).
Davie followed in the tradition of Herbert Spencer (1892/93) and
William Sumner (1906) who equated out-group hostility with ethnocentrism.
For Sumner, ethnocentrism was a universal syndrome, typical of human
nature and functionally related to the formation of social groups and to
intergroup competition.

The insiders in a we-group are in a relation of peace, order, law, government,

and industry, to each other. Their relation to all outsiders or other-groups, is one
of war and plunder, except insofar as agreements have modified it. ... The
exigencies of war with outsiders are what makes peace inside. ... Loyalty to the
group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within,
warlikeness without. ... These relations and sentiments constitute a social
philosophy. It is sanctified by connection with religion. Men of an others-group
are outsiders with whose ancestors the we-group waged war. ... Ethnocentrism is
the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the centre
of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. [Sumner
1906, 12-13]

Though Sumner’s thesis imposed a reductionistic and mechanistic inter-

pretation on the relationship between ethnocentrism and war proneness, it
has been widely adopted and supported by a substantial body of evidence
(Levine and Campbell 1972). It has also been widely debated since its
inception (Lanternari 1980).
To assume that ethnocentrism is a universal syndrome, and thus a
primary cause of warfare, is appealing for several reasons. It seems prevalent
just about everywhere, especially when competitor groups are pitted against
one. another.(van der Dennen 1987). It certainly seems to have been present
when primitive groups/societies were at war or were considering war. And,
following chapter 1, there are good grounds for a “sociobiology of
ethnocentrism” based_on ultimate causes such as inclusive fitness and_kin
selection (Melotti 1987; Vine 1987). But this picture is highly incomplete. Is
ethnocentrism the cause of intergroup warfare or has resource competition
and intergroup warfare reinforced ethnocentrism over evolutionary time?
Why have ethnocentrism and out-group enmity reached beyond tribes and
primitive peoples? How did peace, which developed in the in-group, spread
within extended group boundaries while hostility was simultaneously
directed at members of ever-larger out-groups?
 Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 45

Such questions are fundamental to understanding humanity’s propensity

for warfare. Assuming that ethnocentrism has sociobiological underpinnings
among nucleus ethnic groups, little attention has been devoted to emergent
evolutionary processes which would have reinforced out-group enmity as
groups grew in size and complexity. A pivotal issue in social evolution is
involved. It concerns the centrality of competition and conflict over scarce
resources and how this process shaped individual behaviors, group psychol-
ogy, and interaction between increasingly complex societies.
It is highly plausible that the sociobiology of ethnocentrism was
reinforced during humanity’s past due to important changes in always hostile
environments. The crucial change would have involved an increased
prevalence of other human groups competing for scarce resources. To
counter this competition, groups of tightly related kin (nucleus ethnic groups)
would have begun to ally and merge through intermarriage. Failure of
nucleus ethnic groups to cooperate in fending off competition or threats from
a larger group might have meant reduced access for the individual to scarce
resources, subjugation, and perhaps eventual extinction. Pfeiffer (1977), for
example, submits that the ratio of survival to extinction is similar in
prehistoric groups (societies) and biological species. It has been estimated as
_high as one survivor to one thousand extinctions. Alternatively, the capacity 5
Cof Homo sapiens to respond to competition, to counter a larger group with an ie
“ equally large group, would have yielded a balance of power necessary to”
\ assure security and, perhaps, the status quo.
Since failure to maintain a balance of power could have resulted in
extinction, groups and their expansion figure as forces of selection in our
theory. Motivated by resource competition, conflict, and warfare, struggles
to maintain balances of power gave rise to more complex societal units which
continued the legacy of intergroup warfare. Resource competition and
resulting warfare were thus among the major forces which stimulated tribal
formation and acted to maintain tribal organization. In similar fashion, they
were among the major forces which stimulated and maintained chiefdoms
(amalgamation of tribes), and so on. It is by this process that out-group
enmity and ethnocentrism have been reinforced and carried over from
nucleus ethnic group to band, to tribe, to chiefdom, to nation-state. An
evolutionary typology of these preindustrial, sociopolitical systems is pro-
vided in Table 3.1.
In this chapter, we elaborate this proposition by filling out the
sociological dimensions of group dynamics which reinforced in-group amity/
out-group enmity during early humanity. The most important of these,
groups as forces of selection, constitutes the second building block in our
theory.
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Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 47

Unlike ultimate causes relevant to all environments (such as inclusive fitness),

groups as forces of selection represent an emergent, proximate, environmen-
tal cause. They have reinforced suspicion and intolerance of out-group
members as well as war proneness during a long period of humanity’s past.
Because evolution always involves adaptation to past, not present, environ-
ments, we interpret the processes involved as a seed of humanity’s propensity
for warfare. They are indicative of the “deep structure” of human nature
itself. By deep structure, we do not mean historical legacy. We mean
evolutionary priorities which have influenced the assembly of the mind, its
performance as an enabling mechanism in conflict situations, and the param-
eters of cognition itself.
Although the organization and size of most groups and societies today
are far removed from tight-kin criteria, later chapters will show how seeds of
conflict have found expression in the psychology of warfaring propensities
through cultural ethnicity, nationalism, and patriotism. For the moment,
however, let us concentrate on processes which reinforced the sociobiology of
ethnocentrism during early evolution.

SOCIAL BENEFITS TO GROUP SOLIDARITY

In early hominid evolution, it is likely that membership in an expanded

nucleus ethnic group (50-200 individuals) would have increased each
individual’s access to scarce resources and the ability to manage others.
Huntingin numbers, for example, would have enabled primitive man to
overcome large game. Numbers would also have reduced the susceptibility of
individuals to attack from dangerous animals. To facilitate hunting and to
prevent attack, groups would almost certainly have served as information
centers about the nature and location of both resources and predators. The
more these features of group membership enhanced inclusive fitness (the rate
of reproduction, quality of offspring, survival), the more group members
would have been deterred from splintering off. Bear in mind that early
humans spent a long time during which their social behavior was structured
largely by both defense against large predators and competition with them.
As a purely sociological phenomenon, then, groups had many benefits to
offer genetically related individuals during early human evolution. Table 3.2
summarizes several of these along with selected costs. Benefits include anti-
predator effects (safety in numbers), improved predator effects (hunting
game), feeding benefits, and breeding success (improyed thermal regulation).
When combined with a more ultimate rationale for sociality (chapter 2), such
48 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

TABLE 3.2
Benefits and Costs to Group Membership ee
SA SNS2 SV A i Ne Ree NR SR FP ed
Benefits
Antipredator effects (safety in numbers)
Deterring predators due to bunching behavior
Deterring predators: larger numbers facilitate more information, less time required per
individual for scanning
Predator confusion via scattering behavior when under attack
Reduces individual risk through the dilution of any one individual in a group and the
concentration of all individuals in one space versus individual dispersion
Improved Predation
Increased efficiency in prey size selection and effective kills
Improved exploitation of limited resources (space, land) via invasion, attack, and dispersal
of competitor groups of conspecifics
Feeding Benefits
More time to feed, less time needed to scan for predators
More information about food
Breeding Success
More offspring due to antipredator effects and improved predation
Improved thermal regulation: use less energy and maintain body temperature more
effectively than when isolated
Easier to stake out niche/territory for rearing the very young

Costs
More conspicuous because a group is a larger entity
Within-group competition for resources (food)
Dominancy hierarchies with some individuals doing well, others poorly
Population size may increase to point of oversaturation of local economy
Increased risk that conspecifics will kill one’s progeny
Increased risk of infection by contagious diseases and parasites
Inbreeding is hazardous within groups which are too stable/cohesive

Source: Adapted from Bertram (1978), Hamilton (1975), Barnard (1983), and Alcock (1984).
benefits render groups a universal vehicle for the expression of social
cooperation not only among humans but among all social primates.

GROUP FISSIONING AND COMPETITION

During later periods of human evolution, Alexander (1971, 1979), proposes

that the main purpose of kin-related groups, and thus their significance for
individual members, shifted from protection against predatory effects of
nonhumans to protection against predatory effects of other human groups.
Initially, other human groups would have become a problem under three
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 49

conditions. First, a particularly successful group may have reproduced to the

extent it reached a critical mass, fissioned, and produced two groups. These,
in turn, may have competed for scarce resources in the same, familiar niche.
Second, the distribution of scarce food resources may have become
increasingly concentrated, prompting groups to reside and compete in closer
proximity to one another. Third, groups may have migrated into already
occupied territory, fostering competition and conflict.
It is the first and second process, accompanied by increasingly rapid
population growth (Table 3.3), that likely triggered sustained intergroup
competition. Joyce (1987) argues that changes in the distribution of food
resources were probably the single most important catalyst in this competi-
tion. These changes can be traced to worldwide environmental disturbances
during the Terminal Pleistocene deglaciation. During that time, large
mammals became extinct, whereas seasonally available lower tropic-level
plants and smaller animals became more plentiful and localized. Joyce
proposes that a shift toward reliance on these resources would have
compelled human groups to settle around resource abundant areas, defend-
ing them against exploitation by other groups.!

TABLE 3.3
Estimates of Past Human Populations

Cultural Population
Date period in millions

From 1 million B.p. Paleolithic hunter—gatherers 2-5

12,000—2,000 B.p. Agricultural age 200
At 300 B.p. Literate age 500
At 100 B.p. Industrial age 1,000
At 45 B.p. Nuclear age begins 2,300
Present day 5,000

Note: B.p., Before present.

Source: Adapted from Campbell (1985).

A central idea here is this: When organisms are placed in the position of
having to share resources or defend their niche, competition and conflict can
be expected, especially when scarce resources are defendable (Wilson 1978;
Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1979). Niche is an ecological concept used to
describe a territory or environment within which an organism, species
_subgroup, or species can survive for long periods of time.? A fundamental
niche describes the territory and conditions of survival for the organism when
50 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

it is not competing with others. A realized niche describes conditions of

survival for the organism competing with others in the real world (Hardestt
1971). Ecological studies show that organisms typically contend with
competition. And, when
realized niches because the real world is fraught with
competition results in reduced access to resources, inclusive fitness may be
threatened through reduced reproduction and survival.
Conditions of resource competition involving niches can be subsumed
under the “principle of competitive exclusion,” an ecological paradigm for
evaluating aggression and conflict over scarce resources (Vayda 1976). This
principle embodies the idea that two species occupying and exploring the
same portion of a habitat and sharing the same resources cannot coexist
indefinitely — one must eliminate or marginalize the other. Like many
ecologists, we use this term broadly to include threats of “competitive
exclusion” all along the phylogenetic scale. Abruzzi (1982, 19) maintains

Competitive exclusion operates among human populations. If two popula-

tions enter into competition over the exploitation of a given set of resources, the
more efficient competitor expands against the less efficient one and the latter
population is eventually excluded from the contested portion of the niche.
Competitive exclusion may result in the complete local elimination of one of the
competing populations or, if the complexity of the community permits, its
restriction to a reduced portion of its fundamental niche.

This threat alone would tend to heighten, if not reward, hostility toward
members of nearby out-groups.?
Contrary to the hypothesis that relationships between nucleus ethnic
groups were shaped largely by conflict in an environment of scarce resources
is the idea that conflict avoidance and resource sharing were just as prevalent.
This idea does not sit well, however, with implications of inclusive fitness
theory. Nor is it evident in empirical studies which demonstrate that primate
social groups are intolerant of the close proximity of extragroup conspecifics
(Bernstein and Gondov 1974). To illustrate why, McEachron and Baer
(1982) developed the following example. Suppose that group A is using a
limited resource and group B arrives. Group A can avoid B by retreating, try
to ignore B, cooperate with B, or compete with B. If the resource is easily
available, it might benefit group A to retreat and avoid any possibility of
conflict. However, in the evolutionary long run, this strategy would be self-
defeating. Groups which succeeded in maintaining control of an important
resource would have an enormous selective advantage over groups which
always retreated and, thus, could not control resources.
On the other hand, if group A were to ignore or cooperate with group B,
this could be construed as resource sharing. This would most probably occur
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity St

when resources are abundant or extremely difficult to defend, such as water

holes. If the resource was really limited, however, sharing would be unlikely.
When A and B share a resource, it is equivalent to creating a larger group, AB,
which automatically creates problems. First, the resource would have to be
divided among more group members, thus lowering the inclusive fitness of
every member in both groups. The reason, of course, is that individuals in
group B are unlikely to be related to those of group A. Thus, sharing leads to a
decrease in inclusive fitness of everyone involved.
Second, there is the problem of social structure; group AB does not have
one. It has two distinct organizations since no individual in group A has any
rank in group B and vice versa. If exploiting the resource requires any kind of
organization, it is likely that there will be rank-order conflicts to determine
the appropriate structures. McEachron and Baer conclude that if conflict is
inevitable, it makes better evolutionary sense for groups to compete to resolve
ownership of the resources as groups rather than experiencing both the
internal conflict and decreased inclusive fitness that would accompany a
merger.
Another argument at odds with the principle of competitive exclusion is
that while closed groups and resource competition may be widely prevalent,
such conditions cannot be assumed to exist among all social primates. This
argument is an outgrowth of studies on chimpanzees which (1) bear the
clearest physical resemblance to humanity’s apelike ancestors, (2) are the
closest primates to humans in terms of the ratio of brain weight to body
weight, and (3) appear to follow an open-group concept. This reasoning
implies that closed-group behavior may not be the “natural order of things”
and that out-group enmity may be peculiar to some, but not all, social
primates.
Empirical studies bearing on the open- versus closed-group debate have
been summarized by Reynolds (1980b). His review of the evidence led him to
distinguish the social behavior of chimpanzees from that of baboons and
macaques who clearly do maintain closed groups and protectively guard
territory. In his words,

Chimpanzees, in the first place, are nomadic. There is no territory ownership

in them or any of the large apes. In savanna woodland conditions, distinct groups
do form and keep apart except that sexually receptive females move between the
groups. In the Budongo forest chimpanzees were free to travel widely, and did not
do so only because social ties and familiarity with a certain part of the forest kept
them to some extent in one place. We found no evidence that forest-living
chimpanzees are attacked or chased away from certain areas by other members of
their own species, but instead a potent attraction existed between the groups we
observed.
 52 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

The word “group” raises immediately the most exciting feature of forest
chimpanzee society, which I have called the ‘“‘open-group” system and which
again is reported by most of those who have studied the species in its natural
forest habitat. In a nutshell, no chimpanzee belongs to any one particular
permanent social grouping which stays together all the time. [Reynolds 1980b,
70]
Reynolds’ survey placed into question the assumption that social
primates have generally found it functional and/or necessary to occupy and
maintain closed groups. But it soon became apparent that his sources on
chimpanzee behavior, which dated from 1931 to 1969, had a common
shortcoming. They did not track chimpanzee sociality over sufficient periods
of time. It was Jane Goodall (1986) who, after a decade and a half of research,
observed that a large, seemingly diffuse group of chimpanzees suddenly
fissioned into two troops. Each occupied a distinct although coterminous
territory and became overtiy aggressive toward one another. Moreover,
males of each group appeared to stake out boundaries between territories. Ifa
lone chimpanzee was sighted who did not belong to the immediate group, it
would be chased and, if caught, viciously attacked. Goodall reports several
bloody fights between the two groups, resulting in fatal wounds to several
infants and adults.
The consensus now is that baboons, macaques, chimpanzees, and
primitive tribes often show similar modes of fissioning, expansion, and
resource competition. After a critical population density is reached by
successful survival and reproduction (about 200-300 individuals), within-
group antagonisms often lead to splits along kinship lines. When this
produces competition for the same resources, mutually antagonistic groups
form and in-group amity/out-group enmity becomes highly visible.4
The most well-documented case of fissioning among humans involves
the Yanomamo of southern Venezuela — the same people we examined in
chapter 2. Approximately 15,000 live in 150 villages comprising from 25—
300 individuals. Chagnon and Bugos (1979) report that when the number is
much beyond 300, intravillage tensions increase, arguments are more
frequent, and resentments begin to take hold; when a split finally occurs it
frequently follows a fight involving weapons. Freedman (1984) perceives this
as occurring in other primitive settings as well. He is currently testing
his
hypothesis in a relatively pristine tribal setting on the Cape York Peninsula
.
He concludes that fissioning phenomena have helped propel hominids
into
new environmental niches, to jealously hold territory once there, and
to
universally exhibit intergroup antagonisms and within-group insularity.
This
tendency is described by almost all field anthropologists as “ethnocentrism”
regardless of the fact that the term subsumes a wide range of behaviors
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 53

(Levine and Campbell 1972). Exact definitions of the term vary by usage and
context.

WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT

Baer and McEachron (1982) further propose that the evolution of weapons
had the effect of making unrelated individuals far more dangerous to one
another, and that this, in turn, reduced intergroup transfer of individuals and
made nucleus ethnic groups much more closed. Weapons would have altered
the costs and benefits of aggressive behavior since they could be developed
faster than physiological protection against them would evolve. Weapons
could also be thrown, thereby removing the need for the attacker to be in
close proximity to the attacked. Thus, the development of arms would have
lowered the cost of attacking while increasing the costs of being attacked. In
doing so, xenophobia and antagonism toward strangers would likely have
increased as well. This enmity would work to reduce intergroup transfer of
individuals — where fighting was a necessary initiation — for two reasons.
One, the costs of injury would be so much higher, and second, one group
might have better (or unknown) weapons than another group. Out-group
enmity would be strongly reinforced in the process.
The thrust of Baer and McEachron’s hypothesis is that one of the first
evolutionary steps taken as weapons developed was to severely restrict
individuals from changing groups. From an inclusive fitness standpoint, the
refused admission of an extragroup conspecific would have resulted in two
beneficial effects for in-group members. First, because of the increased
tendency of males to remain in their natal group, the genetic relatedness
among the adult males, and the group as a whole, would increase. This would
have increased solidarity among group members and, thus, cohesion of the
group per se. It would also work to reduce within-group aggression, and thus
genetic loss through injury or death from in-group fighting.
Second, the new high costs of within-group aggression would act to
change the character of the dominance system. Insofar as dominant
individuals could not afford to be injured in rank-order fighting, there would
be an increased selection for social skills in attaining and maintaining status,
and decreased emphasis on overt aggression. These would combine to
produce a more effective internal ordering of power relations to the extent
that groups could be more quickly mobilized to meet challenges from
outsiders. In the process, intergroup conflict would select for greatly
increased human capacity to establish and accept group hierarchy as well as
to recognize enemies versus relatives and friends (Alexander 1971).
54 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

BALANCE OF POWER

Group dynamics involve both fissioning and the capacity to form alliances
that result in larger, more complex groups. From an evolutionary perspective,
che prevalence of ever-larger, complex societies must be preceded by a
rationale for alliances among potentially hostile nucleus ethnic groups. Why
did nucleus ethnic groups ally or merge to produce bands, tribes, chiefdoms
and nation-states as described in Table 3.1?
Alexander (1971, 1979) submits that the necessary and sufficient forces
to explain the maintenance of every type and size of human group above the
immediate family extant today and throughout all but the earliest periods of
human history were war (or intergroup competition and aggression) and the
maintenance of balances of power between such groups. This has been called
the balance-of-power hypothesis. It divides early human history into three
broad periods of sociality (Alexander 1979, 223):

1. Period I: Small, polygynous, probably multimale bands that stayed

together for protection against large predators.
2. Period II: Small, polygynous, multimale bands that stayed together
both for protection against large predators (probably through
aggressive defense) and in order to bring down large game.
3. Period III: Increasingly large polygynous multimale bands that stayed
together largely or entirely because of the threat of other, similar
nearby groups of humans.

For period III sociality to have emerged as a stable behavioral strategy,

intergroup competition and warfare over scarce resources would have had to
be widely prevalent throughout evolution. What is the evidence? Montagu
(1976) suggests there is absolutely none. Alexander (1979), on the other
hand, maintains there is not an iota of evidence to support the idea that
aggression and competition have not been central to human evolution. He
takes Montagu to task for placing too much emphasis on the absence of
archaeological records to reconstruct intergroup warfare over the past
million years or so. Were there no written records during the last 5,000 years
of human history, a similar procedure might lead us to scoff at the idea that
thousands of wars have occurred as groups and societies have attempted to
dominate or confiscate each others’ resources.
Alexander (1979, 232) defends his balance-of-power hypothesis as
follows:
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 55

Let me review the steps by which I arrived at the hypothesis that the rise of
the nation-state depended on intergroup competition and aggression, and the
maintenance of balances of power with increasing sizes of human groups. First,
Williams’ (1966) convincing argument that selection usually is effective only at
individual or genetic levels forced a search for reasons for group-living that
would offset its automatic costs to individuals [authors’ note: see chapter 2]. The
available reasons have proved to be small in number, and only one, predator
protection, appears applicable to large groups of organisms, including humans.
For humans a principal “predator” is clearly other groups of humans, and it
appears that no other species or set of species could possibly fulfill the function of
forcing the ever-larger groups that have developed during human history.
Carneiro (1961) and Flannery (1972) essentially eliminated as “prime movers”
all of the other forces previously proposed to explain the rise of nations, and I
think their arguments are reasonable. Flannery (1972) and Webster (1975) also
eliminated intergroup competition as a prime or singular force, and they sought
causes of the rise of nations within societal structure. This last procedure I see as
unsatisfactory because it involves explaining ultimate factors by proximate
mechanisms. Flannery’s rejection of intergroup aggression as necessary but not
sufficient is inadequate because he did not specifically consider intergroup
aggression in terms of the maintenance of balances of power. His elimination of
other factors may or may not be satisfactory; realizing, however, that automatic
expenses to individuals accompany group-living, expenses that are generally
exacerbated as group sizes increase, I find that none of the supposed causes for
the rise of nations except balances of power seems even remotely appropriate.

There is little to fault in Alexander’s review of the debate. Indeed, many

anthropologists interpret the rise of tribalism and tribal organization as
stimulated and perpetuated by continual conflict or warfare with neigh-
boring groups (Sahlins 1968; Harner 1970; Service 1971; Dumond 1972;
Adams 1975; Fried 1975). Citing ethnographic and historical data on
African society, Cohen (1984) submits that warfare “has promoted accelerat-
ing centralization and bigness” and has played a central role in state
formation.
Carneiro (1978) has extended his previous research by documenting how
chiefdoms, throughout history, have been united into states, and states have
gone to war to create larger states, with competition and selection tending
toward larger and larger units. This process, he argues, can be subsumed
under the principle of competitive exclusion (as defined earlier). Lewellen
(1983) has examined preindustrial political systems to show that formation
of more complex groups such as tribes (the Nuer of southern Sudan),
chiefdoms (precolonial Hawaii), and states (precolonial Zulu) were accom-
panied by military conquest or defense against equally large external groups.
Finally, Ferrill (1985, 13) reviews the historical evidence to conclude
56 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Prehistoric warfare, however, was as independently important to early

society as the discovery of agriculture, the development of proto-urban
settlements and the emergence of organized religious systems. Indeed, we shall
see that the Neolithic Revolution is in many ways characterized by an explosive
revolution in man’s war-making capacity, that the appearance of proto-urban
settlements in some areas was influenced at least as strongly by warfare as it was
by the discovery of agriculture. In fact, though the cultivation of plants occurred
in many places for numerous reasons, in a few places it may actually have been
war rather than agriculture that led to the earliest Neolithic settlements.
However, as many anthropological and archaeological studies caution,
viewing conflict and warfare as though they were the only forces to have
stimulated tribal formation or acted to maintain tribal organization neglects
other interacting factors (Braun and Plog 1982; Creamer and Haas 1985). As
Braun and Plog point out, it may be more appropriate to interpret tribal
formation as a response to different kinds of environmental stress or risk
including, but not limited to, warfare. This caveat applies particularly to
factors influencing the development of primary or early states (see Figure
3.1). For example, one of the most extensive cross-cultural studies of early
state evolution by Claessen and Skalnik (1978) singles out four causal factors
in their formation: (1) population growth or population pressure, (2) war or
the threat of war, (3) conquest for new resources or control of other peoples,
and (4) influence of previously existing states. Most early states seem to have
developed out of a combination of these factors with emphasis on resource
needs, competition, expansion and potential conflict. It thus seems reason-
able to abandon the search for a single dominant cause in favor of theories
that stress the systematic interaction of several causes.
From our perspective, the important point is not whether warfare per se
was or was not the singular force in the rise of tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
Nor do we feel obliged to argue that groups were in a constant state of
warfare with one another. Rather, it is the threat of resource competition,
competitive exclusion, and warfare that matters. With Alexander (1971),
Schmookler (1984), Falger (1987), and others, we submit that balance-of-
power strategies evolved to help minimize these threats from expanding out-
groups. The motivation for one group to expand (ally or merge) was
essentially that another competing group had done so. Balance-of-power
strategies thus represent a major vehicle by which “peace” was extended
beyond members of one’s own nucleus ethnic group to members of the newly
expanded group. As a raison d’étre for alliances or mergers of nucleus ethnic
groups, balances of power also broadened the boundaries of ethnocentrism
and redirected out-group enmity to competitors of ever-increasing size and
societal complexity.
In addition, it is important to acknowledge that regardless of the exact
process that led to group expansion, larger groups would likely have enjoyed
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 57

New World

Mesopotamia | Nile Valley, Egypt inde yee Valley, var we

Alexander
the Great

Chavin de
Huantar

Cheng-Chou
An-Yang
2000 Kingdom
Middle
Indus
state |
|

Coastal
5 settlements
4
s)
3000} 3 | ur
2

5 Harrapa
a Mohenjo-Daro
a

Yang-shao
culture

oe
=

Agriculture to Domestication of
000 ec corm?
Early farming?

FIGURE 3.1. A chronology of primary state development. From Lewellen (1983).

a competitive advantage over smaller groups (everything else being equal). In

the evolutionary long run, larger groups would have displaced smaller groups
and their members would thus have staked out a larger share of humanity’s
gene pool. This implies that behavioral predispositions that facilitated group
58 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

expansion would have been retained and incorporated into the more
permanent repertoire of individual and group behavior.

COMPETITION AND BRAIN SIZE

A related perspective on the centrality of intergroup competition has been

advanced by Biglow (1969, 1972). Biglow argues that increased intergroup
competition and warfare probably stimulated rapid growth in the size of the
human brain as well as increased intellectual ability to cooperate for effective
intergroup competition. The more the brain evolved and the more intel-
ligence was utilized to insure within-group solidarity, including the sharing of
information, the more the group would likely have succeeded in driving
competing groups into less desirable peripheral areas.
In reviewing Biglow’s hypothesis, Willhoite (1976) points out that the
fossil record indicates the brain in the hominid line doubled and perhaps
tripled in average size during the past 3 million years. This trend was
apparently an accelerating process, with the bulk of the increase occurring
during the past million years or less. This is an extremely brief period in an
evolutionary time frame. It implies that distinctive selective pressures — such
as intergroup competition — may have been working on the hominid line.
Most studies associate increased brain size with the growing importance
of tool making, hunting, and food sharing within the context of complex
interpersonal and intergroup behavior (Issac 1980). Blumenberg (1983),
however, argues convincingly that neither in isolation nor in combination can
these behaviors account for the appearance of the advanced hominid brain.
Biglow’s hypothesis, though not confirmed empirically (due to incomplete
archaeological records), nonetheless receives a measure of indirect support
from Blumenberg’s study. Willhoite proposes that successful human groups
may have been the selective forces which pushed less intelligently cooperative
groups into inhospitable habitats, severely lessening their chances of
contributing to the genetic future of the species. This complies with the
concept of “‘competitive exclusion”’ discussed previously.

FORMALIZATION AND CONCLUSION

Groups as effective forces of selection therefore include two components.

First, migration or group fissioning intensified resource competition among
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity 59

nucleus ethnic groups occupying relatively isolated niches. Second, inter-

group cooperatiorwas stimulated by resource competition involving ever-
larger groups. As humanity became more prevalent and as isolated, habitable
niches became less common, competition for scarce and datendable. resources
led to balances of power aa the evolution of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and
nation-states, It is through this process that the‘sonuiialbies of ethnocen-
trism” has been _reinforced..throughout evolution. and--transferred-from
nucleus ethnic groups to higher levels of societal complexity.
Forces involved.can be stated formally in terms.of five.assumptions-and
four implications:

Assumption 3.1. Kin selection, as a behavioral strategy, provides the

social cement for individuals to band together in groups of related individ-
uals. It is highly likely that groups of related individuals occupied distinct
niches in humanity’s evolutionary past.
Assumption 3.2. Grouping reinforced kin selection as a behavioral
strategy by adapting related individuals to “hostile” environments in ways
that promoted survival and reproduction. (Group functions are summarized
in Table 3.2.)
Assumption 3.3. Nucleus ethnic groups did more than merely occupy
environments. They increasingly constituted a part of the environment itself,
to which individuals — related or not — had to adapt throughout evolution.
Assumption 3.4. In combination, the propensity to direct altruism
toward kin, the utility of group membership, and the internal solidarity and
cohesion of nucleus ethnic groups predisposed group members to look
inward. In-group amity was reinforced.
Assumption 3.5. Group fissioning and intensified intergroup resource
competition compounded environmental hostilities, so that groups of ever-
expanding size would have an evolutionary advantage.

Implication 3.1. As populations grew and dispersed and as isolated

nucleus ethnic groups began to come into contact with one another,
competition for the same fitness-enhancing resources likely ensued. This
probably resulted in conflict over resources between groups.
Implication 3.2. As weapons evolved, particularly weapons which could
be thrown, fear and hostility would be directed increasingly toward
strangers. That is, xenophobia likely evolved, manifesting the trait of out-
group enmity.
Implication 3.3. As groups grew and effectively expanded their exploi-
tation and conquest of resources, the motivation for competitor groups to
expand would increase also. That is, a motivation for human groups to
60 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

expand beyond past historically optimum levels of, say, 100 members would
be that other competing groups were doing so. Following the balance-of-
power hypothesis, groups per se became effective forces of selection.
Implication 3.4. As group size and cohesion became effective forces of
selection, the capacity of individual members to identify their respective
inclusive fitness with group security (where significant numbers of group
members were not biologically related) was likely selected for.
It is the last implication which sets the stage for continued development
of our theory in chapters 4 and 5. Behavioral strategies in the service of
inclusive fitness, reinforced by groups as forces of selection, must be
deciphered in more specific terms than the sociology of intergroup conflict.
Adaptation over millennia prior to civilization has involved coevolution of
genes (inclusive fitness), culture (environment), and mind. What effect have
fiercely competitive processes (involving the life and death of one’s kin as well
as alliances with larger groups) had on cognition itself? Has the mind merely
been an objective observer in all this? Or have genetic strategies and
environmental forces shaped mental development in particular ways during
99% of humanity’s past as hunter—gatherers? We argue they have. To the
traditional roster of evolved mental capacities, such as the capacity for
culture and language, we add the capacity of individuais to identify their
respective inclusive fitness with group security even though significant
numbers of the group may not be biologically related.

NOTES
1. Central to Joyce’s argument is Hayden’s (1981) analysis of shifts in the exploitation of
K-selected versus R-selected species by hominids. K-selected species can reproduce repeatedly
but invest in one or a few offspring at a time. Medium-to-large size mammals are a case in point.
r-selected resources, such as plant foods, fish and fowl, reproduce abundantly in temperate,
tropical climates, with distributions which are clumped more spatially and temporally. Shifts in
the exploitation of K-selection to R-selection species likely paralleled large mammal extinctions _
at the end of the Pleistocene (Martin and Klein 1984). With this shift, previously indeterminant
residence patterns of K-selected species would have yielded to more determinate patterns of
R-selected species, groups would have commenced clustering in closer proximity to R-selected
resources, and intergroup competition would have “naturally” ensued (Joyce 1987).
2. Historically, the number of niches is not fixed. It is reasonable to assume that as
humanity’s technological skills improved (for example, introduction of new tools) more niches
would have been made available. Given the extremely low level of technological skills in pre-
agricultural periods, low population (estimated at 2-5 million) would have been accompanied
by few niches; thus competition would have remained intense despite population density.
3. Further support for the quotation from Abruzzi is given by Sahlins and Service (1960,
75) in what they call the law of cultural dominance: “that cultural system which more effectively
Groups as Forces of Selection and Out-Group Enmity
61

exploits the energy resources of a given cultural environment will tend to spread
in that
environment at the expense of less effective systems.”
4. Recall that our theory is a theory of central tendencies. Origins of intergroup conflict
are
traced through the interaction of (1) nepotistic altruism, (2) conditions of scarce
resources, (3)
protective and provocative xenophobia (discussed in chapter 4), and (4) a feedback loop
in which
intergroup conflict would undoubtedly enhance in-group solidarity and vice versa. This
is not to
say that inclusive fitness necessarily prescribes combat with strangers, that early primitives
never
cooperated, or that instances of intertribal cooperation cannot be found today. It is to say, rather,
that the interactive process described previously produced central tendencies, whereby
intertribal cooperation would have been an unstable if not rare event. Any degree of permanence
of intertribal cooperation would have required the addition of an extraneous influence (balance-
of-power considerations) and the invocation of the identification mechanism as described in
chapter 5.
PART Il

Emergent Psychological
Strategies: An Overview
The deep structure of humanity’s propensity for warfare can only be partially
understood in terms of the ultimate utilities which humans have sought to
maximize (chapter 2). The same applies to evolutionary processes which have
favored alliances of groups during competition/warfare with ever-larger
groups (chapter 3). The role of the mind in this process must be established as.
well. The mind is not simply a material component of the brain that looks
impartially on the realities of the objective world. As a product of evolution, it
serves as an “enabling mechanism.” It channels cognition and conscious
motivation in specific ways and patterns that enhance survival.
Chapter 4 argues that genes and culture have coevolved to produce biases
in mental development. This process is called epigenesis. Resulting biases
favor certain pathways of mental development and social learning over
others. We identify several and illustate how they have reinforced in-group
amity/out-group enmity in the context of nucleus ethnic groups over
evolutionary time. In doing so, we show how cognitive processes help insure
that inclusive fitness is incorporated into cost—benefit calculations in contexts
of intergroup conflict — even if such calculations are seldom consciously or
explicitly conducted as noted in Appendix I.
Chapter 5 develops the most critical link in our theory. We call it the
“identification mechanism.” It explains how psychological predispositions,
as products of epigenesis, find expression and reinforcement today. The
identification mechanism embodies a set of psychological processes that
characterize interactions between inclusive fitness priorities and the environ-
ment so as to determine preferred group membership. The most natural
preference is, of course, the nucleus ethnic group. However, when the
environment demands that larger social units be formed, and membership in
them be secured, then one’s group preferences/allegiances become an open-
ended question.
A preferred group is one that best fosters and protects the individual’s
inclusive fitness. Thus, to determine preferred membership, cognitive and
emotive processes in the identification mechanism continuously extract
64 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

relevant information from the cultural environment. By understanding how

the identification mechanism works, we can shed light on the maintenance of
in-group amity/out-group enmity as groups have evolved from band to tribe
to chiefdom to nation.
Chapters 4 and 5 address complex links in the chain between ultimate
utilities (inclusive fitness) and contemporary manifestations of group cohe-
sion and mobilization for conflict (nationalism and patriotism). These links
are fundamentally psychological and the processes involved may not be
familiar to many readers. Yet they are the medium through which inclusive
fitness (ultimate factors) interacts with the environment (proximate factors).
Accordingly, they are crucial to our theory. As Barkow (1984) points out,
cultural traits, such as warfare, are socially learned, patterned expressions of
hominid psychological dispositions. Their patterning has occurred over
millennia. But it is the underlying psychological dispositions or mechanisms,
not the cultural traits themselves, which must be understood directly in terms
of an evolutionary theory of warfare.
CHAPTER 4

Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition

“Mind” is an aspect of the body’s
activity, not a ghost in the machine.
[Leslie White 1949]

INTRODUCTION

In the 1920s, psychologists William McDougall and J. B. Watson were the

center of a great debate. McDougall (1928) advocated that genetically
influenced motivational factors should be fully acknowledged and incorpo-
rated into sociopsychological explanations of behavior. Watson (1924), in
contrast, advocated that cognition and learning were shaped almost purely
by environmental forces. Watson won the battle. As a forerunner of the
“empty organism” doctrine, later associated with B. F. Skinner, Watson and
followers made learning and Pavlovian conditioning singularly responsible
for social behavior. For the next 50 years, American psychology disregarded
evolutionary biology and followed a sterile course of trying to account for all
human activity in terms of conditioning, positive and negative rein-
forcement, and the law of effect (Eysenck 1980).
Watson’s influence diminished with the rise of European ethologists
Tinbergen (1963), Lorenz (1965), Eibl-Ebisfeldt (1979), Baars (1985), and
others. Their research demonstrated the existence, importance, and speci-
ficity of mammalian learning biases. This prompted a research program on
genetic factors in psychology, which led to the realization that McDougall
had been right in principle, though not necessarily in detail (Eysenck 1980).
The significance of biological factors in learning and cognition has been
further demonstrated by psychologists such as Piaget (1971), Garcia and
Koelling (1972), Seligman and Hager (1972), and more recently by a great
many others (Peterson 1983; Bickerton 1984).
66 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

What have we learned from this long-standing debate? How does it help
decipher the sociopsychology of humanity’s propensity for warfare? Four
insights have emerged. First, it is essential to avoid false dichotomies such as
nature versus nurture or humans versus animals. Any view of human
behavior and mental development based on an antimony of nature and
culture, simple genetic determinism, or, conversely, cultural determinism is
obsolete and untenable (Fox 1985). Those who would argue that evolution-
ary biology is irrelevant to the study of the mind and its functions because
behavior is learned and not demonstrably influenced by genetic strategies fail
to recognize that there are no purely genetic and no purely environmental
phenotypic traits. Both components are always involved (Turke 1984).!
Second, it is time to abandon the doctrine of “empty organisms,” or the
assumption that the mind is a blank slate_at birth. Such assumptions are
completely at odds with empirical studies by ethologists, evolutionary theory,
and theories of cognitive development. As Konner (1982, 60) puts it: “The
design of [the brain and its circuits] cost many millions of years. Entrusted as
it is with much of what we need to get through life, even to reproduce ..., one
would not expect its assembly during growth to be left to the vagaries of
experience.” Hamilton (1975) makes a similar point that our genetic system
has various built-in safeguards which provide not a blank sheet for individual
mental and cultural development, but a sheet at least lightly scrawled with
tentative outlines that assist survival and reproduction.
Third, specific examples of innate tendencies to learn some behaviors
more readily than others should be provided to strengthen existing theory. As
Seligman and Hager (1972), Konner (1982), and others have suggested, it is
time for an empirically based theory of prepared or directed learning. Such is
currently the most promising strategy to combat false dichotomies of nature
versus nurture.
Finally, the search for innate regularities in mental development is
supported by interdisciplinary efforts to decode the “human biogram”
(Count 1973; Laughlin and Brady 1978). The human biogram embodies
deep- and surface-level psychological and neurological structures that
influence human’ behavior. Links between these structures are depicted in
Figure 4.1. They convey that cultural content and behavioral patterns that
characterize populations (suspicion and identification of strangers) are often
surface-level expressions of more complex primordial structures (ethnocentr-
ism and xenophobia). These, in turn, result from the interaction of biological,
psychological, and sociocultural processes. For example, cognition is a
product of neurobiological structures and processes at a deeper level in the
organism’s biogram, as well as a product of the range and intensity of
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
67

FIGURE 4.1. Linking deep and surface structures in the human biogram. Adapted from
Laughlin and Brady (1978, 4).

SURFACE STRUCTURE Overt

(Behavioral expressions of symbolic and meaningful
information in culture pool, including economic,
political, social, ideational content, etc.)
SOCIETAL INFRASTRUCTURE

(Mechanisms for organizing individual

cognitive infrastructures, such as
ritual, institutionalization,
- bureaucratization, etc.)
COGNITIVE INFRASTRUCTURE

(Mechanisms for processing

perceptual material)
NEURAL INFRASTRUCTURE

(Central and peripheral

nervous systems;
structure and
function)

Covert
environmental stimuli perceived to be significant by the organism (Laughlin
and Brady 1978; Edelman 1987).2
To apply these lessons to warfaring propensities, consider this question:
How did the human mind evolve to serve ultimate functions (for example,
inclusive fitness) in an environment which stimulated its growth (for
example, intergroup conflict) and in an environment which it subsequently
helped to create (with weapons, tribes with borders, and cadres of warriors or
armies)? Needless to say, answers cannot come from empirical observation.
Not only are archaeological and fossil records incomplete, but experimenta-
tion cannot replicate past environments. Rather, theories of genotype—
phenotype development or epigenesis must be consulted. They suggest that
innate regularities in mental development have favored or biased certain
pathways of learning over others. It is the resulting biases in learning and
cognition — as innocuous as they may seem — that have the power to shape
present environments and influence intergroup hostility.
Innate tendencies in mental development are most obvious (and least
disputed) in humanity’s capacity for learning language and culture, but they
are also evident in the manifestation of phobias or tendencies to lean toward
certain choices over others. Xenophobia is one of these. By producing a small,
68 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

covert bias in our attitude toward strangers, xenophobia has a profound

effect on our social environment. This is evident, for example, in our
preoccupations with locks on doors, insurance policies against theft,
automobile and residential burglar alarms, permits for in-house firearms,
traditions and methods of personal self-defense, policing establishments,
surveillance of neighborhoods (neighborhood “watches”’), the importance of
obtaining and carrying identification cards, and fortified establishments
(banks).
This chapter argues that innate biases in learning and cognition have
resulted from a coevolution of genes (ultimate genetic strategies) and culture
(including evolved social environments) over.a span.of several million years
prior to-“‘civilization.” They have done so in ways which contributed directly
to the sociopsychology. of in-group amity/out-group enmity in the past and
which continue to contribute indirectly and covertly today. These biases are
essential ingredients in the psychology of intolerance and intergroup
hostility.
Recognizing that directed learning is at work is but one part of the
psychological foundation of cur theory, however. Most important, it sets the
stage for chapter 5, which argues that evolved biases have allowed groups to
redefine boundaries of in-group amity/out-group enmity and develop new
forms of mobilization such as nationalism and patriotism for defensive/
aggressive tactics.
How does epigenesis operate? How does it give rise to directed learning?
Though complex, the processes involved are fascinating and well worth
reviewing. They are requisites to illustrating how directed learning can
reinforce humanity’s propensity for warfare in the context of nucleus
ethnicity. |

EPIGENESIS: ORIGINS

Epigenesis embodies the now well-accepted idea that physical and mental
development is the outcome of continuous interaction between a
genetically
encoded program and the environment of the developing organism (Staddon
1985). Inspired by the evolutionary biologist Waddington (1957, 1975), it
represents a radical departure from general process learning theory and the
principle of equipotentiality — 4 la B. F. Skinner (1974). General process
learning theory assumes that a universal law underlies learning in all species.
The principle of equipotentiality, in its most extreme form, states that all
pairs of events E, and E, can be learned by association with equal ease in any
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition 69

species. Despite an enormous amount of research, such universal laws have

proven elusive. Rather, investigations by behavioral ethologists leave little
doubt that (1) inflexible species-specific responses sometimes exist which
prevent the learning of certain tasks, (2) some responses are more easily
altered than others, and (3) there are marked differences between species in
tasks that are learned and the ways in which they are learned (Barnard 1983;
Roper 1983).
Constraints on learning are most evident in cases where animals
consistently fail to learn a task when their performance with other, often
more difficult tasks would lead us to expect otherwise. We now know this
failure is not a sign of poor learning ability. Rather, learning tends to be
tailored to the animal’s needs. And in this context, it is the animal’s niche
(environment) that most affects what it learns and the way it learns it. Because
niches differ in many respects, so, too, do biases in learning. The emerging
concensus on learning constraints has been succinctly summarized in
Scientific American by Gould, a biologist, and Marler, a zoologist. Excerpts
of these summaries are provided in Figure 4.2.
As the animal’s niche grows more complex, adaptive behavior depends
more on the animal’s past (Staddon 1985). In turn, behaviors..acquired
through past experience must be stored with minimal duplication for rapid
recal l
and application. Past experience can thus affect later behavior in many
ways. To appreciate the range of possibilities, it is crucial to look at how a
species’ development reflects past evolution and incorporates effects of the
environment. All of this leads to the epigenetic view of development.
Epigenesis, the interaction between environmental differences and
genetic variability, can produce new phenotypes, such as observable physical
traits, development of specific mental capacities, and predispositions. Konner
(1982, 23) offers a clear example of how epigenesis works:

Consider a population of birds in which some individuals learn to like a new

sort of berry — say blueberries. These individuals start nesting in blueberry
patches, and their offspring learn to like blueberries just as they did. Eventually,
just randomly, the genetic shuffle produces a few individuals who like blueberries
right off — they don’t have to go through the process of learning. These
individuals may be favored by selection (the readily available food is the
blueberry; their genetically coded taste for them means that they will begin eating
them sooner than other nestlings; their weight gain and maturation are faster;
and so on), and may reproduce so effectively that eventually we observe a
generation in which all individuals have the genetic propensity to like them
without learning.
In the meantime, selection is also likely to be proceeding in related areas.
Enzyme systems for processing blueberries better, or retinal cells more sensitive
— all by
to blue, may arise through chance and spread through the population
 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

A New Synthesis

Learning is often thought of as the The emerging picture of learning in

alternative to instinct, which is the animals represents a fundamental shift
information passed genetically from one from the early days of behaviorism,
generation to the next. Most of us think when animals were supposed to be
the ability to learn is the hallmark of limited to learning by classical
intelligence. The difference between conditioning and operant conditioning
learning and instinct is said to and were expected to be able to learn
distinguish human beings from “lower” any association or behavior by those
animals such as insects. Introspection, processes. It is now understood that
that deceptively convincing authority, much learning, even though it is based
leads one to conclude that learning, on conditioning, is specialized for the
unlike instinct, usually involves learning of tasks the animal is likely to
conscious decisions concerning when encounter. The animal is innately
and what to learn. equipped to recognize when it should
Work done in the past few decades learn, what cues it should attend to,
has shown that such a sharp distinction how to store the new information and
between instinct and.learning—and how to refer to it in the future. Even the
between the guiding forces underlying ability to categorize and perform
human and animal behavior—cannot be cognitive trial and error, a process that
_ made. For example, it has been found may be available to the higher
that many insects are prodigious invertebrates, may depend on innate
learners. Conversely, we now know guidance and specialization—
that the process of learning in higher specialization that enables the chickadee,
animals, as well as insects, is often with its tiny brain, to remember the
innately guided, that is, guided by locations of hundreds of hidden seeds,
information inherent in the genetic whereas human beings begin to forget
makeup of the animal. In other words, after hiding about a dozen.
the process of learning itself is often This perspective allows one to see
controlled by instinct. that various animals are smart in the
It now seems that many, if not ways natural selection has favored and
most, animals are “preprogrammed” to stupid where their life-style does not
learn particular things and to learn them require a customized learning program.
in particular ways. In evolutionary terms The human species is similarly smart in
innately guided learning makes sense: its own adaptive ways and almost
very often it is easy to specify in embarrassingly stupid in others. The
advance the general characteristics of idea that human learning evolved from a
the things an animal should be able to few processes, which are well
learn, even when the details cannot be illustrated in other animals, to fit
specified. For example, bees should be species-specific human needs helps to
inherently suited to learning the shapes bring a new unity to the study of animal
of various flowers, but it would be behavior and a new promise for
impossible to equip each bee at birth understanding human origins.
with a field guide to all the flowers it
might visit. (p. 85)

(p 74)

FIGURE 4.2. Reconciling those ancient opponents: instinct and learning. Excerpts from
Gould and Marler (1987).
strictly genetic means. But the point is that the initial conditions for this genetic
change will have been created by behavioral change within individual life spans.

The propensity to like blueberries without direct learning illustrates how

nongenetic adaptation can lead to genetic evolution. It begins with environ-
mental changes within the life course of some individuals. Blueberries are
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition 7t

present and, if readily consumed, provide survival and reproductive advan-

tages. A random mutation occurs among the offspring of some individuals in
the consuming population that initiates a preference for blueberries (or
facilitates easier learning about them). The result is greater survival and
reproduction of offspring who now carry the genetic predisposition. Over
time, the entire population comes under a new selective force whereby those
with preferences for blueberries survive and reproduce in greater numbers.
They eventually displace those relying on the slower process of learning only
to like blueberries.
Konner’s example is modeled on a great many experiments which show
how environmental modifications, accomplished during the individual
organism’s life cycle, can bring a population under new selective forces. The
result is a net genetic change that can bias mental development or learning “‘in
the same direction as” the original environmentally stimulated modification.
This reasoning applies equally well to humanity’s evolutionary past when
environments became increasingly hostile due to intergroup conflict and
development of weapons. Recall that, in chapter 3, groups were depicted as
effective forces of selection in a world where balance-of-power considera-
tions began to prevail. Under these conditions, it is possible that random
mutations among individuals in some nucleus ethnic groups initiated
xenophobia (hostility, aversion toward strangers) in environments where
learning about enemies and identifying them was crucial to survival. These
individuals may have been favored by selection for several reasons: (1)
human predators were prevalent in the environment, (2) a genetically coded
aversion toward strangers would have enabled individuals to avoid attack
more readily or immediately than would learning alone, and (3) by avoiding
injury and death, survival would be enhanced, leaving more offspring from
these individuals. Over time, those with the genetically coded aversion
toward strangers would come to prevail in the population.?

EPIGENESIS: BIASES AT WORK

The epigenetic view of development has been taken an important step further
by sociobiologists Lumsden and Wilson (1981) in their pioneering study
Genes, Mind, and Culture. These scientists were not so much concerned with
reconstructing environments that gave rise to innate learning biases during
humanity’s past. Rather, they focused on the ongoing interaction of
epigenetic priorities with evolving culture. As such, their empirically based
theory seeks to establish the existence of specific epigenetic rules, or restraints
72 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

that genes place on mental development, and quantify their influence on

cognition and cultural evolution.4 They synthesize a great amount of data
from psychology and the neurosciences to show that people do, indeed, lean
innately toward certain choices over others (Lumsden and Wilson 1985,
346):
Categories of cognition and behavior with evident innate bias include pro-
portionate representation of vision and the other principal senses in vocabularies,
as well as color classification, phoneme formation in the development of
language, preference for normally composed facial features, the forms of
mother—infant bonding and communication, the mode of carrying infants and
other intermediate-size objects, the form and time of the fear-of-stranger
response, phobias, incest avoidance, prediction during logic, and numerosity.

To illustrate the reciprocal effects of biology and environment (including

culture) on mental development, Lumsden and Wilson identify two types of
epigenetic rules — primary and secondary. Primary epigenetic rules are more-
or-less automatic processes that lead from sensory filtering to perception.
Their consequences are least subject to variation due to learning, environ-
ment, or higher cortical processes. For example, cones of the retina are
constructed to perceive four basic colors. In contrast, secondary epigenetic
rules act on our perception of color and all other information displayed in the
perceptual fields. Evaluation of perception through processes of memory,
emotional response, and decision making is influenced by secondary
epigenetic rules. These rules predispose individuals to use certain cultural
artifacts, symbols, innovations, etc., over others in interpreting their
perceptions.
That secondary epigenetic rules have a genetic basis is strongly indicated
by the evidence that so many of these rules are relatively inflexible and appear
during early childhood. For example, xenophobia represents a form of
prepared learning in which human infants from 6 to 12 months old display an
aversion toward adults with whom they are not accustomed (Sluckin 1979;
Lumsden and Wilson 1981). Incest avoidance is another example, in which
case Lumsden and Wilson (1985, 355) argue that epigenetic rules of incest
avoidance interact with culture:
The epigenetic rules that direct the developing mind to avoid incest lead to
cultural patterns prohibiting incest (persons who conform to the aversion leave
more offspring): as a result, genes underwriting the avoidance of incest remain at
a high level in the population. And, finally, the predisposition is sustained as one
of the epigenetic rules.
Another distinguishing feature of Lumsden and Wilson’s work is their
attempt to explain how culture is reciprocally influenced by epigenetic rules.
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition 73

To do so, they focus on parameters of cognition and distinguish between two

types of information units. One is immediately recognizable structural units,
which are extracted from phenotypic traits (for example, skin color), which
can be detected within the larger population. The other is generative units,
which are extracted from the information system shared by members of
society. A generative unit can be a concept, a proposition, or a schema. For
example, a stranger is a concept, an initial verbal reaction to a stranger is a
proposition, and the expression of a taboo against trusting phenotypically
different individuals (strangers) is a schema.
All generative units invoke knowledge structures or other mental
representations such as “danger to oneself is involved” or “‘it is dangerous to
be here alone.” The critical point is this: the direction in which culture evolves
can be influenced to the extent that it “piles up” along well-worn paths. A
hypothetical example might be useful here. Imagine that an immense
diversity of cultural items, artifacts, life-styles and symbolic representations
or meanings are at the doorstep of the mind. Some of these might include
idealistic propositions such as “We are all brothers and sisters of one
species,” “We are all citizens of the planet Earth and should forfeit allegiance
to any one country,” or “We are all the same, if not equal; outward
appearances are irrelevant.” The immensity and diversity of such proposi-
tions, cultural artifacts, and so on are only of secondary importance
according to the Lumsden and Wilson theory. Primary importance is
attached to a subset of these composites that represent the real generative
units because they fit, accommodate and speak to epigenetic rules. If an aver-
sion to strangers were presumed to be an epigenetic rule, Lumsden and
Wilson would therefore seek to show that the propositions given previously
would provoke little significant action or response compared with a
proposition containing a “stranger” content, such as “a stranger lurks
nearby.”
The epigenetic view of development does not claim that all mental
processes, cognition, and conscious motivation are determined, or even
heavily influenced by epigenetic rules. Thus, it does not maintain that
epigenetic rules hold cognition and resulting behavior on an inflexible genetic
leash. Rather, Lumsden and Wilson argue only that biases in mental
development lead to central tendencies in behaviors and accompanying
knowledge structures. A most provocative idea in this respect is that
humanity’s cultural ingenuity (for example, innovations in thinking) will
tend to serve or “pile up as nodes around” the conventions or institutions
most favored by epigenetic rules. Returning again to the idea that an innate
bias favors intolerance/suspicion of strangers, or tends to associate them with
74 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

possible enemies, we observe that a great deal of thinking, innovations, and

culture is directed toward protecting oneself from strangers.

BOUNDED AND ADAPTIVE RATIONALITY

Epigenesis is often construed as a sociobiological way of looking at things but

it has an important counterpart in the social sciences — Herbert Simon’s
concept of bounded rationality (Simon 1982, 1985).5
Simon provides several examples of bounded rationality: (1) an individ-
ual may act on impulse, which is inconsistent with other goals that seem, to
objective observers, as more important; (2) he or she may proceed on
incorrect facts or ignore whole other areas of related facts; (3) he or she does
not draw correct conclusions from facts; (4) he or she may fail to consider
more viable alternative courses of action; and (5) he or she may not use the
best methods for forming expectations or adapting to uncertainty. Address-
ing social scientists in general, Simon argues that an individual’s choices and
behavioral outcomes should be characterized as they appear subjectively to
the actor. As he puts it,
We cannot predict behaviour of rational actors by application of objective
rationality to the situations in which they find themselves because behaviour
depends on the structure of the actor’s utility functions, and because it depends
on their representation of the world in which they live, what they attend to in that
world, and what beliefs they have about its nature [Simon 1985, 100]

Simon’s work meshes most clearly with that of Lumsden and Wilson in
the area of how thinking operates. Simon makes two crucial points. First,
when information hits the senses (eyes, ears) it cannot be used by the
deliberative mind until it proceeds through a bottleneck of attention — a
serial (not parallel) process where information capacity is exceedingly small.
People are, at best, rational in terms of what they are aware of, and they can
be aware of only fragmented facets of reality. Second, behavioral models
must account for the limited span of attention that governs what considera-
tions, out of a whole host of possible ones, will actually influence the
deliberations that precede action. In particular, Simon advocates the need to
understand the conditions that predispose humans to impulsive or rout-
inized action that disregards much of potentially relevant reality.
Simon’s work — for which he received the Nobel Prize — has prompted a
far-reaching research program on alternate forms of rationality. These
include limited rationality, contextual rationality, game rationality, pro-
cedural rationality, posterior rationality, and adaptive rationality (March
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition 7S

1986). Our interest falls on the latter: adaptive rationality. By sorting

information from past experiences or environments through the use of
behavioral predilections, such as rules of thumb or habit, adaptive rationality
permits the efficient management of considerable information. More than
this, rules of thumb combat uncertainty by prescribing paths of action that.
haw worked, in the past, to yield positive net returns. (Hirshleifer 1985;
Hodgson 1985). If environments fluctuate or experience a rapid permanent
change, such rules may well mislead us by suggesting wrong conclusions. But
if preferences have been stable and the environment prolonged enough, ,
adaptive rationality might even produce behavior that would be chosen on’
the basis of perfect rationality and information.
Let us apply these ideas to kin selection and nucleus ethnicity to illustrate,
albeit crudely and hypothetically, how they might work. It is possible that
decision rules of thumb, such as preferences for the welfare of kin, have
proven adaptive in evolution when information becomes exceedingly com-
plex. If so, decision rules of thumb may have evolved as cultural enabling
mechanisms to assist the operation of epigenetic rules in maximizing an
individual’s inclusive fitness and group solidarity. In the case of kin, this
process may have been enhanced by mental channels attuned to heed physical
and symbolic ethnic markers. Thus, biological relatedness may have given
way to cultural ethnicity today, but in the human mind, the latter typically
invokes images of blood relatives and a common homeland, language, and
customs. These are the kinds of mechanisms — products of the human mind
and its reasoning capacity — which are likely to have provided fairly realistic
clues or rules of thumb for recognizing one’s relatives over evolutionary time.
For example, where kin relatedness is in doubt, cultural and ethnic markers
may be used to derive inferences and appropriate emotional responses. If
ethnicity is in doubt, nationalism might be used (more on this in chapter 5).

SYNTHESIS

That innate regularities bias pathways of mental development, cognition, and

learning is now apparent from three lines of research. One, summarized in
the first section on epigenesis, focuses on the process by which changes in
past environments can lead to innate preferences. Another, summarized in
the second section on epigenesis, says little about past evolutionary environ-
ments per se, but seeks to establish the existence, operation, and influence of
specific classes of epigenetic rules, or the restraints that genes place on
phenotypic development. The third, couched not in evolutionary biology but
76 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

in developmental and cognitive psychology, advocates a revision of “global

rationality assumptions”’ to reflect realities of bounded rationality, rules of
thumb, and habit — all of which can predispose humans to routinized or
impulsive action.
Where does this leave us empirically? First, we can safely assume that
epigenesis has played a significant role in the coevolution of genes, mind, and
even culture, but we cannot recreate conditions under which this has taken
place in humanity’s evolutionary past. Second, we can assemble data which
strongly suggests the existence of specific epigenetic rules, Through theoreti-
cal and inductive inference, we can also speculate on the environmental
conditions which likely gave rise to them. Again, however, we cannot
conclusively prove their existence. Finally, we can assemble data to illustrate
the existence of bounded rationality, but we cannot conclusively prove that it
arises from the process of epigenesis or that it is rooted in specific epigenetic
rules. All this is to saythat.we.can.‘‘shadow,” but cannot conclusively
capture, the effects of epigenesis.on.mental development, cognition, and
learning.
A middle ground is clearly implied. Recall that Konner (1982) and others
suggest that an empirically based theory of prepared or directed learning is
currently our best bet for reconciling those ancient opponents, instinct and
learning. The challenge, therefore, is to provide empirical evidence to shadow
the existence of directed learning and develop theoretical underpinnings to
rationalize its utility in humanity’s past. This is the direction we now take.
Two caveats are in order. First, we are most concerned with general examples
of directed learning and their relevance to group psychology, not their
peculiarities in widely varied environments. This places the emphasis
squarely on the notion that humans have brought something “typical” with
them from their evolutionary past and that it will be activated in typical ways
in typical environments. Put differently, we are concerned with establishing
central tendencies in the expression of directed learning over time and across
environments. Second, we do not presume that one or even several examples
of directed learning can reductionistically account for humanity’s continuing
propensity for warfare. Rather, they are elements of a more complex process
of directed learning (discussed in the next chapter) which plays a powerful
though covert role in warfaring propensities today.
Figure 4.3 crudely illustrates the epigenetic view of development as we
see it at work in three examples of “directed” learning. Observe that
epigenesis, or evolved psychological mechanisms, is represented as the
coevolutionary outcome of ultimate genetic strategies (to maximize inclusive
fitness) and adaptation to a changing environment (groups as forces of
selection). This has given rise to nepotistic altruism, xenophobia, and incest
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 78 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

avoidance, all of which have combined to reinforce and contribute to the

sociopsychology of in-group amity/out-group enmity in the context of
nucleus ethnicity. Understanding how these examples of directed learning
operate, both singly and in combination, provides a link by which predomi-
nant features of group psychology can be traced back to a network of innate
regularities in mental development and cognition. These regularities, in turn,
are rooted in the wisdom of humanity’s past. They have powerful impacts for
two reasons. First, culture tends to pile up in ways that speak forcefully to
these facets of directed learning. Second, these innate regularities shape
environments to which (future) individuals have had to adapt.”
Assuming that causes of nepotistic altruism and its relevance to
warfaring propensities are now familiar (chapter 2 and Appendix I), let us
xeview evidence suggesting that xenophobia and incest avoidance have ,
influenced the sociopsychology of competition and warfare among nucleus (
ethnic groups. Evidence on xenophobia is reviewed in the following section, s
whereas the case for incest avoidance is presented in Appendix II. We will
then examine the interaction of nepotistic altruism and incest avoidance, on
the one hand, and humanity’s capacity for language and classification, on the
other, to show how systems of meaning, cognition, and emotion have evolved
to reinforce in-group amity/out-group enmity. It is the process of interaction
we want to illustrate — a process embedded in warfare propensities today.

XENOPHOBIA

/Ethnocentrism is the universal characteristic of treating culture, values, and ?

/ customs of one’s group as standard, normal, and, hence, preferable if not
superior to those of out-groups (see chapter 3). More than any other trait, it~
has been singled out as a potent force behind out-group enmity, discrimina-
tion, and nationalistic sentiments leading to war (see the reviews by Melotti
1987; van der Dennen 1987). Ethnocentrism, however, is driven by
something far more pervasive — xenophobia: meaning fear, hostility, and
aversion toward strangers.
Studies. of. xenophobia.have produced three conclusions relevant to
humanity’s warfaring prope
First, nsity
traditional conditioning
. or learning
models of human fear acquisition have failed to account for the persistence of
some fears.and _phobias-when. appropriate reinforcements are absent (Carr
1979). Second, much. evidence.supports.the premise that while fear of
strangers is reinforced by learning, its acquisitionininfancy (6-12 months of
age) appears governed by built-in preparedness.(Russell 1979; P. K. Smith
 Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
79

1979). Third, the most comprehensive theory of the development of fear in

childhood (including fear of strangers) places the origin of fear in an
evolutionary perspective (Bowlby 1969, 1973). The evolutionary perspective
on xenophobia gains further credibility. given. its prevalence among non-
human_primates as well (Holloway 1974; Southwick et al. 1974; Bixler
1981; Goodall 1986; van der Dennen 1987).
While Bowlby and, later, Marvin (1977) see xenophobia as a behavior
that protects helpless infants from danger, P. K. Smith (1979) couches their
argument in a sociobiological perspective:
Bowlby has suggested that the early development of fear follows largely pre-
progammed lines, even in the human infant. If this is the case, it makes sense to
consider the adaptiveness of such fearful behavior from the standpoint of
biological evolution and inclusive fitness. As mentioned earlier, Bowlby makes
out a case for the early fear-provoking events being natural clues to danger. This
seems clear enough for pain, sudden change in physical stimulation, darkness,
being alone.
Why wariness of strangers? In terms of inclusive fitness, it makes sense for
the attachment bond to develop between an infant and closely related adults, as it .
is closely related persons who are most likely to behave altruistically. Closely
related adults are therefore the best bet to protect an infant from danger (as in
doing so they will help to preserve their own genes in future generations). [P. K.
Smith 1979, 197]
More recently, Reynolds et al. (1987) have devoted an entire volume to
sociobiological links between xenophobia and discrimination, racism, and
nationalism. The authors review several studies to suggest that innate biases
are involved.
The evolutionary and sociobiological perspective becomes all the more
credible when xenophobia is decomposed into environmental stimuli,
evolved biological/physiological responses, and patterns of cognition or
conscious motivation. With respect to environmental stimuli, research
confirms that fear of strangers intensifies among infants when (1) strangers
stare, (2) they move in a sudden or unpredictable way or approach directly,
and (3) the overall context or setting is unfamiliar.’ Such conditions are most
likely to indicate life-threatening situations when the individual who stares or
approaches directly is a predator (human or nonhuman). Russell (1979)
points out that since predators fixate their eyes on their prey when attacking,
eye movement could be an evolved predator cue. Moreover, swift, unpredict-
able movements of a stranger, especially one approaching directly, may be an
attack cue, prompting immediate aversion or hostility. Further, fear is
heightened when settings are unfamiliar and the infant’s mother or other
familiar individuals is not present.
80 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Assuming that the environments of early humans were rife with

intergroup competition, mechanisms which prompted appropriate behavior
on the first encounter with dangerous predators/strangers would be favored
through selection over alternate mechanisms where behavior required
experience with strangers. Indeed, the costs of not suspecting strangers, and
being wrong, would have been so high that natural selection would not likely
have left defensive behaviors to an open-minded experimental strategy alone.
Flohr (1987, 192) makes a similar point with respect to nonhuman animals:
Based on innate predispositions (flight/fear), an animal could develop
behaviors which could turn out to be wrong, but which by and large,
overcompensate for this disadvantage by an increase in security and in rapidity.

That immediate and automatic physiological responses to threatening

environmental stimuli exist further suggests that xenophobia is hard-wired.
Drawing on a vast literature, Mayes (1979) concludes that fear involving
heights or direct predator threats (involving strangers) is likely to produce
pallor, increased heart rate and blood pressure, reduced salivation and
secretion of digestive juices, outward trembling of the limbs, tension in
certain muscles of the head, and many complex changes through the
sympathetic nervous system. In particular, hormones prompting catabolic
mobilization of energy resources are released during states of fear and
anxiety. These include hydrocortisone, corticosterone, and cortisone, all of
which prepare the body for rapid energy expenditures. These processes are
typically associated with flight, withdrawal, or aversion to potentially life-
threatening stimuli.
Cognition is another crucial element of xenophobia. Fear of strangers
not only arises from physiological reactions to a threatening situation or an
internal drive to take avoidance action. It involves cognitive appraisals of
threats as well as cognitive labeling or conceptual action that organizes the
individual’s response (Mayes 1979; Thomson 1979). This process is
facilitated by two common features of most fear states. One is the
anticipation of harm; the other is the association of fear/anxiety with a
specific object or class of objects (predators). As Archer (1979) points out,
this has led to evolved sensory and neural equipment which enables
individuals to monitor their environment for potentially dangerous stimuli
and to avoid these before damage can occur. This monitoring system involves
a central representation or series of representations of features of the
environment. Any large discrepancy between what is observed and what is
expected or normal is likely to induce escape or withdrawal behavior.
Monitoring for change in the environment thus represents an effective way of
avoiding danger and, during evolution, would have conferred a great
advantage on the species which could act this way.
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
81

Given our earlier argument that predation by humans and nonhuman

animals was likely the most important danger in humanity’s evolution,
it
follows that behaviors for predator avoidance would have greatly increase
d
chances for survival. In this process, xenophobia would have led the
individual to associate strangers with predators and danger, thus prompting
action to restore the status quo (flight, hostility). Because the intensity of fear
would have been reduced in the presence of familiar individuals and
surroundings, preference for in-group amity (one’s kin) and group ter-
ritoriality (one’s niche) would have been reinforced. Cognitive appraisals of
threats, therefore, would not have been limited to imminent danger but to any
special circumstances that might have upset the status quo. As Thomson
(1979) points out, objects of our anxiety need not be causal antecedent
conditions. Rather, they can be anticipated events which might or might not
happen. Thus, the evolution of weapons which could be thrown, combined
with selection for increased intelligence in human predation, might well have
produced “free-floating” anxiety states or paranoia toward any potential
predators, including other nucleus ethnic groups, clans, tribes, and so on.

LANGUAGE, CLASSIFICATION, AND EMOTIONS

One or even several examples of directed learning cannot reductionistically

account for humanity’s propensity for warfare. Effects of directed learning
are often interactive, covert, and more relevant to past environments than
today. But there is another reason why they alone cannot explain warfaring
propensities. Directed learning has interacted with other evolved human
capacities, such as the capacity to learn language and to erect classifications
which symbolically assist in the process of discrimination (friend/enemy, kin/
nonkin, marriageable/not marriageable). Language is thus a great facilitator
of directed learning (Fox 1979b; Flohr 1987; van der Dennen 1987).
Understanding the processes involved yields additional clues about the
impact of learning biases such as kin selection, xenophobia, and incest
avoidance on the psychology of in-group amity/out-group enmity.
From an evolutionary perspective, the origin, structure and function of
language is interpreted as an enabling mechanism, one that has fostered
greater chances of survival. Language per se is not so much of interest as is
humanity’s evolved capacity for learning language, any language. Nor are the
varieties of languages, terms, or symbols so much of interest as are universal
rules of grammar, the mind’s propensity to classify, and the interaction of
emotion and cognition in word recall. It is not simply that we classify that is
82 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

so important but (1) what we classify and (2) how we act on our
classifications through cognition and related emotions (Bock and Klinger
1986). These points set the stage for understanding how directed learning has
combined with language and classification to affect the sociopsychology of
groups. Let us consider each in turn.
That language involves biological equipment is the dominant view today,
but with important caveats.? One involves a shift away from Chomsky’s
“Janguage organ” (1964, 1980) to the general hypothesis of a “language
bioprogram” (LB). The LB involves a search for inner-core grammars which
have adaptive significance that underlie aspects of human cognition. This
represents a refreshing departure from the Chomskyan distaste for evolution-
ary explanations (Cartmill 1984). Another development, pioneered by
Bickerton (1981, 1984), involves a search for species-specific language
programs, aspects of which may be genetically coded and expressed.
Research by Bickerton and a great many others shows that the complexity
and diversity of language does not imply that culture has somehow displaced
the importance of reduced-form biological propensities for structuring and
learning language.!°
Equally important is the seemingly universal and perhaps innate
propensity of the human mind to classify, the basic principle of which is
binary. As Flohr (1987, 195) suggests, binary classifications and schemata
are conducive to dichotomizing, discriminating between categories, and
developing prejudices concerning stereotypes (kin/nonkin, friend/foe).
All of this leads to a crucial point concerning humanity’s propensity to
structure and learn language. We act on classifications that matter in terms of
appropriate emotional responses (Bock and Klinger 1986). As Fox (1979b)
puts it, the urge to classify (the intellectual process) cojoins with the urge to
interdict (the emotions). Herein lies a central question: Why are we so
emotive about concepts, categories, rules, and classifications? In some cases
the arousal potential of some concepts/words (stranger) can be detected
physiologically through skin resistance changes (Schurer-Necker 1984). Why
do we have emotions which reinforce discrimination between categories (kin
versus nonkin), rules of thumb (avoid strangers), and taboos (incest) at all?
The answer is that, like all animals, we must act, and we have to be moved to
act. Why do we have the particular emotions we have? The answer is that we
classify, learn, and respond to those things that have had high survival value.
As Fox (1979a) puts it, the organism has been primed for certain learning
processes, and the motivations (or emotivations) that we learn most easily are
those that have gotten us here. Thus, we learn rather easily symbolic
representations of fear, aggression, incest avoidance, language, attachment,
and, probably, even altruism.
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
83

It was during the evolution of Homo sapiens that the brain was pressured
by both the extreme concern with the environment (for example, threats
from
out-groups) and the need to conceptually control this very same environment.
To facilitate survival, it has had to develop both the right emotions and the
right conceptual processes at the same time. These have developed as
complements — even as functions — of one another. Such is the evolutionary
Perspective on the tight relationship between stereotypes of out-group
members and prejudices often associated with them (Ford 1986; Flohr
1987).11
We are now prepared to examine the relationship between the capacity
to learn and emotively respond to language as it involves kin selection. Given
the importance of these characteristics to reproduction and survival during
99 percent of humanity’s evolution, we would fully expect evolved forms of
symbolic communication and meaning to reflect them.!2 In addition, we
would expect evolved forms of communication and meaning to evoke
emotional responses and action in ways which culturally reinforce these
rules. Feedback is the central process here. Again, drawing heavily on Fox
(1979a,b; 1980), the feedback process can be illustrated in the evolution of
kinship categories.
Fox observes that kin are classified and we act in terms of these
classifications because survival value is involved. The survival value of kin
classifications can be traced largely to nepotistic altruism and incest
avoidance. The argument concerning language and nepotistic altruism is this:
the propensity to discriminate among kin exists; what the kin-term systems
do is give voice to this via systems of linguistic classification which operate
according to certain general rules.13
Fox goes on to argue that language, classification and incest avoidance
have coevolved in tandem.'4 The tendency and ability to discriminate among
kin would have required flexibility among all social animals, but among
rapidly evolving hominids this requirement would have been compounded
many times over. Selection would have favored hominids who could define
and redefine the degrees and kinds of kin relationships according to changing
circumstances. For example, as groups began to fission and compete for
similar resources, classification would likely yield categories of close kin
versus distant kin, or discrimination between immediate and distant kin in
foraging, hunting—gathering, and defensive—aggressive strategies. Moreover,
as kin groups came into increasing contact with members of unrelated out-
groups, their perception of a stranger or a potential enemy would have been
enhanced by the absence of a kin term implying some degree of familiarity or
association. In short, classification systems would have given nucleus ethnic
groups the degree of specificity and flexibility needed to combine kin
 84 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

selection, identification of strangers, and, most important, boundary

maintenance. '5
It is the process of interaction among directed learning, the capacity for
language, and the propensity to discriminate on the basis of classifications
which is most relevant to the sociopsychology of humanity’s propensity for
warfare. In general terms, the body, mind, and emotions cannot be separated
in this process except as parts of a feedback loop. They have interacted in
subtle yet complex ways to reinforce boundary maintenance between nucleus
ethnic groups and in-group amity/out-group enmity during much of human-
ity’s evolution.

TYING IT TOGETHER

Epigenesis and channeled cognition represent the third building block in our
theory because they show how ultimate priorities (inclusive fitness) and
adaptation to past environments (specifically in the context of conflict
between nucleus ethnic groups) can influence mental dispositions today.
They do so through epigenetic rules or innate biases in mental development.
In the case of humanity’s propensity for warfare, these innate biases do not
reinforce warfare propensities directly. They do so indirectly by biasing
cognition and directing learning in complex, covert ways. The processes
involved are developed in chapter 5 in the context of a psychological
identification mechanism.
Following the format of previous chapters, key elements of epigenesis
and its relationship to humanity’s propensity for warfare can be stated
formally as follows:

Assumption 4.1. The mind, as an enabling mechanism, has various

built-in safeguards. They provide not a blank sheet for individual mental and
cultural development, but a sheet at least lightly scrawled with certain
tentative outlines to assist survival and reproduction.
Assumption 4.2. Tentative outlines to assist survival and reproduction,
be they “constraints on learning”, “epigenetic rules”, or clear cases of
“adaptive rationality”, are evident in many examples of directed learning.
They have evolved through the joint interaction of ultimate utilities
(kin
selection), groups as forces of selection (intergroup competition), and
other
environmental configurations (development of weapons and related for-
tifications which shape environments).
Assumption 4.3. Humanity’s capacity for learning language and sym-
bolic representations of the real world are great facilitators of directed
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
85

learning. Universal propensities to classify in binary fashion (kin/non

kin,
friend/enemy) and propensities to respond emotively to classifications
(altruism, fear) have assisted the process of discrimination involving individ-
uals, objects, ideologies, and so on.
Assumption 4.4. Small biases in directed learning can have major
impacts on behavior when fundamental and near universal aspects of social
environments (that is, socialization) shape or amplify them. This occurs when
environmental conditions giving rise to biases in humanity’s past (intergroup
conflict and suspicion of strangers in the context of nucleus ethnic groups) are
equally or more prevalent in contemporary environments.
Assumption 4.5. Examples of directed learning (kin selection, incest
avoidance, xenophobia) tend to cluster and interact in complex ways with
humanity’s capacity for language and classification to produce systems of
cognition and emotion which reinforce in-group amity/out-group enmity.
Assumption 4.6. Biases in directed learning have contributed directly to
intolerance and hostility toward members of out-groups during humanity’s
past (nucleus ethnicity), versus indirectly and covertly today (nation-state
and multiethnic states).

The impact of directed learning on warfare propensities is complex

because (1) it involves a coevolution of genetic priorities and changing
environments when the brain of Homo sapiens was undergoing rapid
expansion, and (2) it faces radi altered
call environments
y in the world today.
Processes of epigenesis are presumed to have taken place in the context of
intergroup conflict between nucleus ethnic groups during 99% of humanity’s
evolutionary past. These processes have resulted in biases in mental
development attuned to optimize inbreeding/outbreeding, direct altruism
toward kin, discriminate between kin/nonkin, and maximize inclusive fitness
in general. Moreover, humanity’s evolved capacity for learning language, to
discriminate between categories, and to act emotively with respect to
classifications that matter has greatly reinforced the effectiveness of these
biases. Thus, language and culture can be interpreted as enabling mechanisms
— they have allowed humans to bring their intelligence to bear on survival-
related problems in their evolutionary past.
But these biases face radically different environments today. The most
salient feature in this regard is that we no longer operate exclusively in the
context of nucleus ethnic groups. To understand how epigenesis and
resultant mental biases relate to warfaring propensities today we must clarify
how learning biases operate in the context of ever-expanding groups.
Figure 4.4 illustrates relationships between epigenesis, group expansion,
and warfare propensities. To simplify the picture, we identify only three levels
 86 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

FIGURE 4.4. Relationships between epigenesis and warfare propensities in expanding group
contexts.
EPIGENESIS "4
in-group amity/ NUCLEUS ETHNIC GROUP ———» warfare propensities
out-group enmity

Identification ____, out-group

mechanism
In-group amity/
enmity
_NATION-STATES —-+ warfare propensities

In-group amity/
out-group enmity \ MULTIETHNIC STATES ——> warfare propensities

of group structure: nucleus ethnic groups, nation-states, and multiethnic

states. In the context of nucleus ethnicity, epigenesis has been instrumental to
the evolution of a group psychology (in-group amity/out-group enmity) that
has contributed directly to humanity’s warfare propensities. At levels of
nation-states and multiethnic states, however, the relationship between
epigenesis and warfare propensities has become covert. The same group
psychology operates but has now been transferred from nucleus ethnicity to
these vastly expanded groups. The concept of a psychological identification
mechanism describes this transferring process and is the subject of chapter 5,
to which we now turn.

NOTES

1. Turke (1984) observes that almost everyone accepts this in principle. The problem, in
practice, stems from failure to keep in mind that a gene’s role in phenotypic development is,
literally, to direct the synthesis of amino acids. In this manner, genes influence all phenotypic
traits, including behaviors. Beyond amino acid synthesis, however, the influence of genes and
gene clusters on phenotypes is always indirect. Turke argues that anyone who denies that genes
influence learning also denies that the capacity for learning culture itself evolved by natural
selection.
2. Edelman’s theory of “neuronal group selection” is at the frontier of explaining how
environment shapes cognitive infrastructure in the developing brain. During early development,
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
87

large sets of neurons of slightly varying forms are present in different places in the embryo brain.
As the individual goes about its earliest physiological development, the sense organs provide
signals that make connections with certain groups of cells in the brain, strengthening connections
between those that are active together. Connections used most become proportionately
strengthened whereas those used less wither away.
The organization of the brain is achieved, therefore, by competition for survival between
neurons (those stimulated most). And because Darwinian selection favors nervous connections
that are most effective for survival, it affects each individual’s response and recognition of stimuli
that are most prevalent and most important in the environment. The interactive processes
involved result in the power to recognize classes of things under many different conditions. They
allow an individual to perform such feats as classifying and recognizing features of the world that
have proven significant to it though they may not already be labeled as such.
A general conclusion of Edelman’s theory is that functioning of the brain depends on the
way it is used. Capacities not developed will atrophy. Because genes cannot organize every
connection in the human brain — there are not nearly enough genes to specify the 100 billion
synaptic connections — Edelman pinpoints self-organizing processes at work as the neuronal
system develops.
Edelman’s theory does not imply, however, that the embryo brain develops entirely from a
tabula rasa state. That is, competitive mechanisms and neuronal group selection do not
determine the total final outcome. Rather, connections between groups of neurons which
develop in the perceptual and motor centers are monitored thoroughly by signals — as Edelman
puts it— “. . .in the function of which certain evolutionary determined values, usually related to
summatory action or fear responses, are embedded.” These evolutionary determined values,
involving for example fear responses, are almost certainly contingent on deeper, more innate
biases in mental development.
3. In the meantime, selection might also have proceeded in related areas. The ability to
differentiate between strangers/enemies versus close kin may have been reinforced through
chance mutation (innate preferences for phenotypically similar individuals) and spread through
the population, all by strictly genetic means. As in Konner’s blueberry example, this genetic
change would have been created by behavioral change (groups as effective forces of selection)
within individual life spans. These examples, though hypothetically stated, are not unreasonable.
4. In doing so, they acknowledge that the reaction ranges of innately influenced traits vary.
Sometimes this permits wide phenotypic plasticity, and sometimes it narrows the range of
variability. Accordingly, Lumsden and Wilson seek to measure the effects of epigenetic rules on
the probability of an individual using one cultural object, artifact, or symbol as opposed to
another. By focusing on the resulting probability distributions or “usage bias curves,” they avoid
programmatic assertions of either genetic or environmental determinism in mental development.
Rather, they advance to a probabilistic, empirically grounded theory of human cognition
(Masters 1982).
5. The importance of bounded rationality has been illustrated by Simon in the context of
neoclassical economics. A common assumption in this field of inquiry is that every individual
possesses a utility function that induces a consistent ordering among all alternative choices that
the individual faces, and that he or she always chooses the alternative with the highest utility.
Simon observes that this utility function makes no assumptions about X’s goals. Also absent are
detailed descriptions of the information processes that go on in the human mind when it is
performing problem solving and other tasks. Indeed, it tends to ignore the fact that the search
among alternate choices is usually incomplete, often inadequate, based on uncertain information
and partial ignorance, and usually terminated with the discovery of satisfactory, not optimal,
courses of action. To make matters worse, Simon observes that a large part of the “‘action” of
economic models — the strong conclusions they seem to support — does not derive from the
88 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

assumptions of objective rationality at all. Rather, they depend on auxiliary assumptions, usually
introduced to provide limits to that rationality, and assumptions about the process of decision
(Simon 1985).
6. Speaking on “Human Nature in Politics” (Simon 1985), he concludes that the study of
the mechanisms of attention directing, situation defining, and evoking should be among the most
prominent targets of political research.
7. The important effects-that epigenesis can have on the environments to which future
individuals must adapt become clearer when we acknowledge that natural selection does two
things. Following Flinn and Alexander (1982), the tirst effect of selection is that it sorts among
genetic variations causing some to spread and others to disappear. The second effect of natural
selection is that it accumulates genes with particular consequences in particular environments.
Through this second effect, which is both poorly understood and neglected by students of human
behavior, natural selection is responsible for molding both cultural and noncultural influences
on diversity.
8. Several studies hypothesizing that novelty per se may be partially responsible for fear in
infants have examined the reaction of children to novel inanimate objects such as toys. No fear is
apparent in this context (except if the toy is a mechanical one that approaches the infant directly).
Indeed, infants typically approach the toy for closer scrutiny or play. In the case of strangers, fear
is reduced considerably if the stranger interacts or responds to the infant by smiling. Gray (1971)
further observes that infant fear of strangers tends to decrease with age due to habitual
encounters with novel individuals. At the same time, however, special fears of predators and
conspecifics increase with age (maturation) as directed learning concerning strangers/enemies
becomes truly directed by learning about those considered dangerous.
9. Humanity’s capacity for learning language has been the subject of rich and varied
debate. At one extreme lie the views of Chomsky and associates (1964, 1980) who posit a mental
organ that is as modular and functionally specialized as, say, the human heart or lungs. At the
other extreme, the cultural determinists maintain that the human mind is but a general-purpose
problem-solving device, no particular part of which is specifically devoted to language. The
majority of linguists, neuropsychologists, and cognitive psychologists lies between these
extremes. They tend to agree that language is learned according to a remarkably uniform
schedule across our species, that portions of it can be selectively impaired by lesions in different
parts of the brain, and that several decades of research on language universals confirm the
original speculation that all languages are “cut from the same pattern” (Wang 1984).
10. Bickerton provides convincing evidence for his hypothesis through ingenious study of
Creole languages. His findings complement other work demonstrating that deaf children who
received little “signed input” were able to create sign language systems (Goldin-Meadow and
Feldman 1977; Goldin-Meadow and Mylander 1983).
11. A popular substantive finding is that positive contact between race or ethnic groups
reduces their prejudices against each other. After reviewing 25 years of research in six major
journals, Ford (1986) concludes that this conclusion is not warranted.
12. Anthropologist Levi-Strauss (1962) has claimed that the tendency of the human mind
to classify for its own sake is a universal. Lorenz (1973) regards the formation of opposite terms
(as a way of thinking) as innate. Douglas (1981) argues that the ubiquitous tendency to separate
societies into halves has to do with a social archaeology which points to a deep structure of
human prehistory. Speaking to those who would advocate a nature—culture split in the invention
and use of kinship terms, Fox argues that our uniqueness lies not in having, recognizing, and
behaving differently toward different kin (this happens among nonhumans as well), but in giving
this process names and rules of naming in the classification, not the kinship. Kinship grouping
and kin-derived behavior do not make us unique; the naming of kin does. The same applies to
Epigenesis and Channeled Cognition
89

incest avoidance; incest avoidance does not make us unique: the rule
does. In both cases, a
universal, hence, biological feature is associated with a “cultural” reinforcin
g practice.
13. The argument concerning language and the incest taboo (reviewed in Appendix
II) is as
follows: the propensity to avoid incest exists; what the taboo does is give voice to
the propensity
via rules couched in language (that is, sex between siblings is morally wrong
if not legally
punishable).
14. How did the relationship between incest avoidance and kin classification evolve
during
humanity’s past? Fox argues that human outbreeding propensities required different
degrees of
flexibility under different circumstances in nature. Flexibility would have been
relative to group
size, rates of mutation, adaptational requirements, and so on. Degrees of outbreedin
g and
inbreeding, in other words, would have differed according to adaptational circumstanc
es. For
Homo sapiens, a consequence of this trajectory of evolution — which included the
origin of
language, classification, and rule obedience — was the rapid migration of population
s into
numerous and varied niches. With adaptational circumstances changing as rapidly as
they did in
space and time, Homo sapiens would have required a mechanism to regulate degrees
of
outbreeding that was more flexible than, say, the mere recognition of individuals.
15. Fox applies the same reasoning to the relationship between evolution of kin
classification and priorities of incest avoidance. This process would have selected for hominids
that could define and redefine outbreeding—inbreeding boundaries to suit the differing
circumstances. That is, it would have selected for speaking, classifying, rule-making creatures
who could differentiate between close kin, more distant relatives, and strangers. In this sense,
classification systems would have given human breeding groups the degree of specificity and
flexibility they obviously needed to combine kin selection, outbreeding, and, most important,
boundary maintenance.
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CHAPTER 5

The Identification Mechanism — the

Critical Linkage
Men who like you are fighting for country, wives and children . . ., who is there
among you who would wish to live and see the outrage and death of these dear
objects which I have named? . . . Enter upon this battle with the full conviction that
in it your country is not risking a certain number of legions, but her bare existence.
[The Roman Consul Aemilius to his legions on the eve of the battle of Cannae, 216
B.C.]

By the voice of her cannon alarming, fair France bids her children arise, soldiers
around us are arming, on, on, ‘tis our mother who cries.
(“Chant of Soldiers, France” from The World’s Collection of Patriotic Songs and
Airs of Different Nations, Oliver Ditson Co. 1893] é

INTRODUCTION

Throughout recorded history, battle songs and national anthems have

identified the safety and welfare of one’s family and close relatives with that
of the larger group. To do so, they often anthropomorphize the larger group.
That is, Rome, France, or similar large political entities have been given
symbolic, humanlike images conveying fatherland or “mother country”.
Such images are almost always employed as mobilization devices (Masters
1983; Johnson 1987). They are widely incorporated in speeches, posters
(“Uncle Sam wants You’’), and editorials, indeed any medium of communica-
tion used to promote in-group cohesion. History abounds in them, bearing
witness to their success at times of conflict and warfare.
The use of mobilization. devices to motivate individuals.to.fight- and
sacrifice for a larger group raises a question of great importance to our
theory. How, throughout evolution, have individuals been able to psycholog-
ically identify with a group much larger than.their.rcespective nucleus. ethnic
group? More important, how are they able to identify so closely with.a larger
 92 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

group that they will even die for its defense? This question is crucial. With
“modern multiethnic and pluralistic societies, the days of small bands of
genetically related individuals engaged in primitive war are largely behind us.
Cultural learning alone cannot explain the psychology of allegiances to
larger groups. Priorities of inclusive fitness maximization, including related
biases in mental development (chapter 4), would not abruptly cease or
become irrelevant as nucleus ethnic groups expanded during evolution. By
the same token, genetically based propensities alone cannot provide the
answer. In societies containing millions of members, the average genetic
relatedness of the group is not significantly different from zero. On the
surface, then, inclusive fitness cannot be of direct significance in such
contexts. Rather, priorities of inclusive fitness maximization have interacted
with changing cultural environments in three ways: (1) to facilitate maximi-
zation of inclusive fitness concerns in ever-expanding group contexts, (2) to
redefine boundaries of in-group amity/out-group enmity, and (3) to evolve
new forms of mobilization for defensive/aggressive tactics. This chapter
explains the processes involved by developing a conceptual bridge to link
how an individual’s priorities of inclusive fitness maximization interact with
priorities and choices in the cultural environment. This bridge, the “‘identi-
fication mechanism,” is psychological in nature. It expiains how building
blocks in chapters 2-4 operate in contemporary situations.
Risking oversimplification, the identification mechanism can be under-
stood in the following way. Broadly, it embodies a set of psychological
processes.that characterize interactions between the environment and
priorities of inclusive fitness..maximization.so.as.to determine preferred-
group membership. A preferred group.is.one.that_best.fosters.and protects
one’s inclusive-fitness. To determine preferred-group membership, cognitive
and emotive processes in the identification mechanism continuously extract
group-related information from the cultural environment. They do so in ways
that answer one of two questions: What group should the individual belong
and fight for assuming choices are available? If choices are not available, if
membership in a larger group such as a state is mandatory, with what degree
of intensity and commitment should the individual serve that group in
warfare?
Understanding how the identification mechanism works also sheds light
on the continuities of in-group amity/out-group enmity as groups have
evolved beyond bands to tribes and chiefdoms and nations. In determining
preferred-group membership, the identification mechanism simultaneously
determines new targets of directed learning with regard to xenophobia,
ethnocentrism, and value-laden classifications of “them” versus “‘us.”’
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 93

THE IDENTIFICATION MECHANISM

The_identification. mechanism-is- not something mechanical that can be
activated by an on/off switch. It operates continuously. It has come into play
as individuals in small groups (for example, nucleus ethnic groups) have
voluntarily formed alliances with other small groups to fend off competition
or threats from a larger group. It has also been activated when individuals in
small groups have been subsumed by larger groups through conquest. When
cohesiveness of the new, larger group is naturally strong (for reasons to be
examined in this chapter), receptiveness to mobilization for warfare tends to
be strong as well. When cohesion is not naturally strong, receptiveness to
mobilization for warfare tends to be greatly weakened.
The intensity with which members bond to a group is determined by
cognitive and emotive processes in the identification mechanism. These
processes are influenced by two factors: the priorities of inclusive fitness
maximization and the cultural environment. These are crudely represented in
Figure 5.1.
FIGURE 5.1. The identification mechanism as a set of psychological processes.
The identification mechanism

Cultural
Priorities to +——_ cognitive processes ——————> environment
maximize (choice of
inclusive fitness #———_ emotive processes ——————» groups to
belong to)

On the left side of Figure 5.1, observe that cognitive and emotive
processes in the identification mechanism are influenced by epigenetic
priorities of inclusive fitness maximization and related biases in mental
development. The mind, as argued in chapter 4, is a product of epigenesis.
Innate mental biases direct learning and place bounds on rationality, thus
filtering receptivity to information about the physical and cultural environ-
ment. The identification mechanism must contend with a mind that tends to
classify, in binary fashion, individuals in groups and group symbols. The
mind does so to the extent that inclusive fitness concerns are always present
and in-group/out-group boundaries are closely assessed. These tendencies
have evolved as adaptations to minimize uncertainties or insecurities in
humanity’s past.
When thinking in terms of cultural environment (right side of Figure 5.1),
the identification mechanism becomes important because isolated nucleus
ethnic groups are no longer an adequate vehicle for survival. Nor are they
complete providers of socioeconomic or political well-being. The balance-of-
power process has necessitated the growth of group size beyond the band to
94 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

tribes, chiefdoms, nations, and multiethnic states. Cultural development has

facilitated this process, providing means and institutions for the maintenance
of ever-expanding group structures (chapter 3).
In its skeletal form, the. identification.mechanism_selects.the most
appropriate larger group for the protection and well-being of one’s nucleus
ethnic group. Implicit cost-benefit comparisons are therefore involved. On
the one hand, inclusive fitness costs and benefits of acting solely on behalf of
one’s nucleus ethnic group are assessed. On the other hand, inclusive fitness
costs and benefits that one can expect from acting on behalf of the larger
group are also weighed. When the benefits from these two sets of assessments
are reasonably close, individuals will be motivated to act on behalf of the
larger group. They will do so with equal enthusiasm, even willingness to die in
warfare, as if acting solely on behalf of their nucleus ethnic group.
The identification mechanism is not deterministic, however, with respect
to which larger group the individual will necessarily select (assuming there
are choices). That is, there is no innately driven preference for any particular
larger group. Rather, the identification mechanism operates to select a
preferred group from the choices available. If the individual has no real
choices, if membership is by ‘“‘conquest and serve,” the identification
mechanism will also not be deterministic with respect to how strongly the
individual will identify with the larger group. Much depends on intervening
variables to be examined later.
Nevertheless, the identification mechanism embodies processes which
are universal. Individuals today must make choices about belonging to
groups larger than their own nucleus ethnic group for survival and
reproduction. With a few exceptions, such as the !Kung bushmen in the
Kalahari Desert, human history has long since passed the point where nucleus
ethnic groups can survive effectively on their own. The balance-of-power
process in evolution has all but eliminated this possibility.
In short, the identification mechanism is not a biologically evolved
genetic mechanism. Nor is it a purely cultural artifact. It is a dynamic
interface between genes and culture. It enables and utilizes our capacity for
language, social organization and culture to serve genetic priorities (inclusive
fitness) in drastically changing environments. For members of primitive
hunting-and-gathering bands today, there is no need for the identification
mechanism. This is because they live exclusively within their own nucleus
ethnic group. The identification mechanism will come into play, however,
should they be forced to abandon the nucleus ethnic group as their niche.
The remainder of this chapter develops the identification mechanism in
detail. How do its cognitive and emotive elements extract information from
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 95

the cultural environment? How does it determine preferred-group member-

ship? In answering these questions, we present a crude model of the
identification mechanism and illustrate its operation in terms of “mental
maps” at the end of this chapter. This allows us to identify potentially potent
vehicles (societal types) for the expression of humanity’s propensity for
warfare versus potentially weak ones.

COGNITION

When individuals belong to groups larger than nucleus ethnic units, we

assume that some form of cost—benefit assessment to membership is involved.
However, when individuals choose between strict adherence to a kin group or
a larger group, we do not assume they assess the exact quantity, duration, and
stability of benefits and costs from each membership. But, if humans do not
sit down with a calculator in hand to work out.a cost-benefit ratio, then how
does the identification mechanism operate? It works by specific cognitive
processes, which have been shaped during evolution by epigenesis, that
underlie much of our everyday activity and extract crucial information from
the outside world. The key cognitive processes involved in this decision are
reification and heuristics.

Reification

Reification refers to mental processes capable of-sorting.vast quantities of

unorganized, piecemeal perceptions-and-stimuli into categories. Categories
of perceptions and stimuli are then stored in long-term memory.as.symbolic
and_ abstract entities (Yates 1985). These abstract entities are often repre-
sented by linguistic symbols. They may further be anthropomorphized into
real objects, taking on human or quasi-human form. For example, the
introduction to chapter 3 showed how primitive tribes reified members of
out-groups as vermin or subhuman ghouls. In addition, at the beginning of
this chapter, we quoted inspirational passages where “Rome” becomes a
“she”? (“her bare existence’) and France becomes “‘our mother who cries.”
Abstract manifestations of Rome and France are thus reified and
anthropomorphized into more personal terms. As such, they gain power as
mobilization devices in warfare.
As Lumsden and Wilson (1981, 1985) show, reification plays a central
role in the incorporation of knowledge and behavioral patterns in the mind.}
96 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Products of reification ‘“‘are the nearly pure creations of the mind, the reveries,
fictions, and myths that have little connection with reality but take on a
vigorous life of their own and can be transmitted from one generation to the
next” (Lumsden and Wilson 1981, 316). Rome is certainly not a “‘she” and
France is clearly not a “mother,” but by breathing life into these abstract
entities, reification makes them part of our family heritage and well-being.
Despite its abstract nature, reification is critical to human action
(Peterson 1981). It imposes familiarity and order on an otherwise chaotic
environment by providing necessary clues and landmarks in our evaluation of
reality as well as in decisions based on perceptions of that reality. In the
identification mechanism, reification indirectly links one’s inclusive fitness
costs and benefits to those expected from acting on behalf of a larger group. It
does so by storing images of larger groups in long-term memory and
presenting them to the mind in symbolic and anthropomorphized form. This
allows the individual to compare alternative group memberships in terms of
their potential impact on inclusive fitness. For example, reification renders
the perception of larger groups comparable to the perception of kin and
nonkin groups. Notions of fatherland and mother country are products of
this type of reification. As mentioned earlier, by referring to Rome as “‘her,”’
the image of Rome as the “mother” country is strongly implied. This evokes
meanings, attachments, and commitments usually reserved for one’s
relatives.
When larger group identities are reified into anthropomorphized, kinlike
entities, our mental assessment of their potential impact on inclusive fitness
acquires a sense of immediacy and meaningfulness.2 Perceptions of related-
ness can also be strengthened by a different source: the leader as the
reification of the group. This is perhaps the most powerful form of
symbolization. As Ike observes (1987, 232),
An individual person cannot identify himself with a large number of people;
he needs a small group, a reference group, a peer group. Or he wants a symbol, a
leader as stand-in for the larger mass of individuals with whom he cannot
identify. The leader is the symbol, and the larger and stronger the number of
individuals he represents, the better qualities are attributed to, or “projected” on
him.

History abounds in charismatic leaders who symbolize the group and are
invariably successful in mobilizing their followers. Many adopt a patrilineal
role, representing themselves as symbolic fathers and their followers as
symbolic children. Followers, in turn, are typically consumed by familylike
devotion and, not infrequently, by fanatic loyalty.
Reification, then, is a potent cognitive component of the identification
mechanism. It anthropomorphizes larger groups, allowing the individual to
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage oF

judge them in terms of his or her inclusive fitness concerns. When groups are
successfully reified into symbols that tap intimate ties to one’s nucleus
ethnicity, performance of the identification mechanism is greatly enhanced,
preferred-group membership is more easily ascertained, and receptiveness to
mobilization against out-groups increases.

Heuristics

Heuristics are mental rules of thumb for valuation and decision making. As
Lumsden and Wilson (1981, 86) observe,

In the process of reaching a decision, the conscious mind does not use the
idea of the genetic costs and benefits of each potential response. The evidence
emerging from cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology indicates that
the mind relies instead on relatively simple heuristics, on rules of deliberation that
can be applied quickly and effectively to a wide diversity of contingencies.

Heuristics are the mind’s way of using reified entities, such as symbols
and abstract categories, to guide decision making. For example, imagine that
people are reified as members of one of two groups, “Eaglehawks” versus
“Crows.” Suppose also that Eaglehawks and Crows are natural enemies.
When a group of people are reified as Crows, the symbol serves as a heuristic
device as well. It alerts us (the Eaglehawks) to be on guard. Heuristics thus
helps reduce uncertainty and ambiguity which the mind must otherwise
confront (Flohr 1987). Heuristics operate continuously if only because they
have evolved from long traditions and often reflect reality in accurate ways.
This is especially true in stable, traditional societies.
Heuristics have come into play in the identification mechanism because
ethnic and cultural markers have often been available to assess potential
inclusive fitness benefits of participating in a larger group. For example,
phenotypic differences such as skin color can provide rough clues about the
likelihood that individuals share a common heritage, language, and, perhaps,
religion. Phenotypic differences thus take on heuristic value because they can
be used in the process of binary classification to create such categories as
similar/not similar, potential friend/enemy.
When ethnic and cultural markers function as heuristic devices, they tend
to be imbued with a rich repository of meaning (A. D. Smith 1984a). All else
held constant, when the individual attributes positive meanings to ethnic and
cultural markers, they are used to distinguish groups that are worth
supporting and fighting for from an inclusive fitness point of view. Similarly,
when ethnic and cultural markers have attached negative meanings, they help
identify groups considered dangerous to one’s inclusive fitness.
98 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Heuristic devices allow the identification mechanism to work best when

environments are cognitively well charted or troubled by a minimum amount
of uncertainty. For example, Crows can be differentiated far more effectively
from Eaglehawks, and appropriate defensive/aggressive tactics can be
planned far more thoroughly, if Crows have been perceived as enemies for
several generations. Moreover, the identification mechanism can be expected
to be most efficient in determining allegiance when the larger group and the
individual share every available ethnic and cultural marker in common.
When all Eaglehawks share common markers, such as the same language,
phenotype, religion, cultural practices, and a myth of common descent, there
is no room for confusion. All “naturally” feel at home.
Alternatively, when total congruence of ethnic and cultural markers is
not possible, ethnic and cultural markers may individually take on different
significance in terms of their respective roles in the identification mechanism.
For example, in a long-lasting struggle for political power over resources,
religion has been the rallying point of conflict between two groups in
Northern Ireland despite linguistic and phenotypic commonality. In South
Africa, different phenotypes draw boundaries between groups despite
religious and cultural commonality. The significant effect of religion and
phenotypes in these contrasting situations results from their respective
histories. In this sense, the importance of cultural transmission in the use of
heuristics must be acknowledged (Boyd and Richardson 1985).

Summing Up

Reification and heuristics have been defined, more or less, on a stand-alone

basis. In reality, however, they interact in the identification mechanism,
allowing the mind to perceive and _assess.the value and.significance of larger
groups to inclusive fitness maximization, They provide markers and
signposts for the mind to chart complex and changing environments. At the
same time, many of these reified mental entities, symbols, and heuristics gain
powerful influence through associated emotional qualities. The emotive
dimension of... the. identification... mechanism is, therefore, of _equal
importance.

EMOTION

Emotions are present in most cognitive processes (Plutchik 1982). In chapter

4, we reviewed Fox’s work (1979a,b) to conclude that cognitive capacity on
 ELON COLLEGE LIBRARY
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 99

its own does not move us to action — emotions do. When perceptions of the
environment are structured and organized by cognitive capacity, emotional
responses to these perceived realities are formulated. Emotional responses
motivate us to act in ways that are appropriate to our long-run survival. They
directly enhance the effectiveness of the identification mechanism by
providing emotively charged motivation for action.
Consider three examples where emotions prompt action. The first
concerns the incest taboo. Following Fox (1979b), a taboo requires prior
evolution of our ability to categorize social reality and to formulate
behavioral rules regarding such categories. These developments evolve as
part of our cognitive capacity. But each on their own is insufficient. “We have
to have some sense of unease or anxiety before we taboo” (Fox 1979b, 142).
In the case of incest, the damaging effects of inbreeding provide good grounds
for anxiety. As a second example, consider the widely observed phobia
toward snakes. Fear of snakes is accompanied by many negative associations
of snake as a generic concept. Given that many (though not all) snakes are
poisonous, the fears are well founded. Finally, in our example of Eaglehawks
versus Crows, feelings of anxiety or fear between members of the two groups
would have evolved alongside cognitive abilities to classify out-group
members as competitors/predators. Emotions must, therefore, provide
response cues to certain stimuli before we are moved to categorize stimuli and
evolve behavioral rules concerning them (for example, take evasive action).
In turn, resulting behavioral rules must be consistent with the nature of our
emotional responses (for example, the fear associated with Crows is
consistent with the behavioral rule to avoid them). This means that cognition
and emotion are jointly required for human action.
Humanity’s propensity for warfare is driven not only by cognitive
processes which reify out-groups as, for example, “evil empires,” but by
associated emotional processes which instill fear and hatred of evil empires as
well. Given the centrality of ethnocentrism in humanity’s propensity for
warfare (chapter 3), it comes as no surprise that emotions attached to
perceptions of threatening out-groups can be intense, with long-lasting
physiological concomitants. Research on the emotional character of interna-
tional conflict by White (1984), a psychologist, identifies two general types of
emotional response: “hot” and “cold.” Hot emotions include fear and rage
and are aroused and mobilized in times of crises. Threatening out-groups take
on physical and diabolical images. For example, during the Second World
War, Japanese soldiers were portrayed in American cartoons as fanged
monsters (Jersey and Friedman 1987). The resulting emotional reactions can
be similar to those which arise when confronting enemies face to face.
100 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Cold emotions involve feelings and beliefs about certain out-groups that
constitute part of a traditional outlook. For example, beliefs may be long
lasting about the evil nature, strength, and weakness of an adversary. Cold
emotions are often accepted, with a certain calmness, as basic facts of life.
White suggests that hate is a typical emotional response of the cold mode
when directed toward an out-group which has a history of perpetrating
objectionable and reprehensible acts toward the in-group. Hate thus
represents a colder, deeper, more constant negative emotion.
When hot and cold emotions are combined and directed toward an out-
group, they can produce a sense of exaggerated fear. As White observes,
““what emerges is the really startling importance of fear (sometimes realistic
but usually exaggerated) as a cause of aggression and therefore of war”
(1984, 115). When fear is exaggerated, the urge to avoid danger by either
escape or attack can be powerful. Since escape cannot be a viable long-run
alternative, defensively motivated aggression emerges as a prevalent strategy.
In the identification mechanism, exaggerated fear occurs when the perceived
threat to the larger group is translated into a threat against one’s nucleus
ethnic group. When inclusive fitness is perceived to be under threat (indirectly
via threats to the larger group), extraordinary measures and responses are
called for. Hence, defensively motivated aggression will likely predominate.
Finally, strong emotions are likely to accompany perceptions of one’s
nucleus ethnicity. Perceptions may take concrete as well as abstract forms,
but primordial representations of one’s ethnicity typically evoke emotional
responses. This has been documented by Isaac (1975). For example, scenes of
one’s homeland tend to produce feelings of comfort and peacefulness.
Interactions with members of one’s nucleus ethnic group tend to induce a
sense of joy and satisfaction. And above all, one tends to feel fulfilled in
performing altruistic acts toward kin. Equally significant is Isaac’s observa-
tion that strong emotional qualities are present in more abstract representa-
tions of nucleus ethnicity. Reviewing an extensive anthropological literature,
he concludes we have a deep-rooted propensity to respond emotionally to the
name of our own group, sounds of our mother tongue, signs of the group’s
traditional religion, and other symbolic representations of our in-group.
These emotional qualities may include spontaneous joy, a sense of pride, and
the security of belonging.*

Summing Up

Emotive and cognitive dimensions of the identification mechanism work

simultaneously to produce powerful group allegiances. When an appropriate
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 101

larger group is identified as potentially beneficial to one’s inclusive fitness

maximization, it is evaluated by means of cognitive symbols and heuristics
laced with meanings of kinship and nucleus ethnicity. At the same time,
emotional qualities pertaining to one’s nucleus ethnic group are brought into
play. The emotive dimension of the identification mechanism thereby
transfers inclusive-fitness-related emotions to membership in the larger
group (albeit not necessarily with the same intensity). This larger group
becomes emotionally integrated, in terms of nucleus ethnicity, into the
individual’s self-identity (Tonnesman 1987). In short, it motivates the
individual to perform sacrificial acts on behalf of the larger group as if acting
solely on behalf of his or her nucleus ethnic group.
In the expanded group context, emotions are typically aroused and
reinforced through the use of rituals, flags, anthems, drums, marches, and
various kin-related heuristics (sacrifice for the Motherland) that have proven
highly effective in promoting group solidarity (Stokes 1982). Indeed,
experimental psychology reveals that individuals react not only attitudinally
but physiologically to the use of kin terms in ways that enhance their
identification with the larger group (G. R. Johnson et al. 1987).

MODELING FUNCTIONS OF THE

IDENTIFICATION MECHANISM

Thus far, we have examined how several processes in the identification

mechanism extract information from the cultural environment. This infor-
mation is used to help determine membership in a group ever-larger than
one’s nucleus ethnic group. The processes involved have facilitated the
transfer of group allegiance, in-group cohesion, and in-group amity/out-
group enmity from band to tribe to chiefdom to nation. However, it is when
individuals choose membership (or acquire it by birthright) in a larger group
and when cognitive and emotive processes in the identification mechanism
operate in situations of nonambiguity that (1) cohesion of the larger group
tends to be naturally strong and (2) mobilization for out-group conflict will
be relatively easy.
Alternatively, when membership in a larger group is not based on choice
but is determined by coercion, cognitive and emotive processes of the
identification mechanism are likely to operate in situations of ambiguity,
cohesion of the larger group will tend not to be naturally strong, and
mobilization for out-group conflict will be relatively difficult. Indeed,
without the right kinds of cultural incentives, the identification mechanism
 102 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

may direct allegiances, first and foremost, to subgroups within the larger
group. Intergroup conflict, if not civil war, may result, as we shall see later.
To understand how humanity’s propensity for warfare finds continuous
expression in a given group context, we now examine the bond between the
individual and his or her membership in the larger group. Under what
conditions will it be nonambiguous and naturally strong? How do situations
of ambiguity present themselves when cognitive and emotive processes in the
identification mechanism are attempting to determine appropriate group
membership? To address these questions, we construct a simple conceptual
model and illustrate its operation in the form of mental maps. Three variables
are incorporated in the model which embody the cognitive and emotive
processes discussed so far. Later chapters draw on this conceptual model to
provide a radical reinterpretation of coups d’état in Africa, nationalism and
patriotism as contemporary expressions of humanity’s propensity of war.

The Variables

The first variable in our model, the recognition markers (RM), takes on
potent heuristic and emotive value in demarcating in-group/out-group
boundaries. RMs include language, religion, phenotype, homeland, and myth
of common descent. Language, religion and phenotypic characteristics are
highly effective stimuli in shaping perception and stereotyping (Ashmore and
Del Bosa 1981; Hamilton 1987). Homeland, on the other hand, is defined by
_ territorial boundaries traditionally associated with the niche of one’s nucleus
ethnic group. It may or may not be identical with territorial boundaries of the
larger group which are often politically determined. For example, coloniza-
tion of Africa imposed state boundaries (that is, boundaries of the larger
group) that either subsumed traditional homelands of African tribes or
annexed them. The Nuer, partly located in the contiguous states of Niger and
Nigeria is a case in point. Finally, the myth of common descent is conceptual.
It tends to be embodied in folklore and vernacular history. More generally, it
is part of a group’s self-identity and belief system (van den Berghe 1981).
Recognition markers link the larger group to the individual’s nucleus
ethnic group through cognitive processes. Suppose all members of the larger
group share a common language, religion, and phenotype. Suppose also that
they share a common homeland (the same niche, however large) and they
subscribe to the same myth of common descent. In such cases, the
identification mechanism would function with relative ease. That is, in
situations of congruence, recognition markers reinforce each other as criteria
of group allegiance. Most effective congruence will occur when RMs are
convincingly anthropomorphized in the person of a charismatic leader.
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 103

The second variable in our model is affective intensity (A];). This refers to
the extent that cognitively perceived recognition markers are accompanied by
emotively charged motivation for action. The affective intensity of any one
recognition marker can vary greatly depending on its significance in a given
situation. For example, in one situation religion may have intense emotional
significance and language may not, whereas the reverse may apply in another
situation. Differences in affective intensity usually stem from group-specific
environmental or historical conditions which have rendered particular
recognition markers more crucial to survival and reproduction than others.
The third variable in our model is size of the larger group. Group size
(GS) denotes in-group membership as prescribed by the territorial bound-
aries of the larger group. Within that territory there may be a few thousand or
millions of individuals, as in many multiethnic states today. Though the
impact of GS on functions of the identification mechanism cannot be
ascertained, a priori, it is reasonable to expect that the larger the group, the
more the identification mechanism will have difficulty functioning. The
reason is that Homo sapiens are best equipped to deal with small groups in
terms of intense emotional relationships (Ike 1987). It is also true, however,
that intervening variables such as well-directed modern information and
communication systems can intensify emotional bonding among geograph-
ically dispersed people.

A Simple Model

To determine the strength of the bond (GB) between an individual and his or
her group, the identification mechanism (IM) functions as follows:
GB = f(IM) [RM, AI;, GS] (5.1)

Equation 5.1 states that the effectiveness of the identification mechanism

(IM) in linking the individual’s inclusive fitness concerns to the welfare of the
given larger group is a function of three factors. These are the degree of
congruence of the five recognition markers (RM), the affective intensity
associated with each of the five recognition markers (AJ;), and the population
size of the larger group (GS).
As the degree of congruence of the recognition markers increases, we
expect cognitive processes in the identification mechanism to function more
effectively to select and bond the individual to a preferred larger group. As
affective intensity associated with each recognition marker (i) increases (for
example, for phenotypes), we expect the individual’s emotional bond to the
group to become stronger. And, everything else equal, we expect that
104 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

efficiency of cognitive and emotive processes in the identification mechanism

will decline as group size increases.
An extension of Equation 5.1 illustrates how the individual would
choose the most appropriate larger group when more than one larger group
solicits membership. Assume the individual has a choice of joining one of two
groups, G, or G). Membership in G, implies that variables RM, AI, and GS
will take on a particular configuration of values. These, in turn, will interact
in the identification mechanism to determine the strength of the bond
between an individual and his or her group. In the case of group 1, suppose
the resulting group bond is GB,. For group two, suppose it is GB. The
appropriate choice of group membership is indicated by the stronger bond, as
felt by the individual. Is the value of GB, greater than GB, or does the
converse apply? In this case, assume the value of GB, is greater than GB).
This would imply that the identification mechanism functions more effec-
tively in the case of Gj, given its particular configuration of values for RM,
Al,, and GS. Membership in G, would thus be more promising for inclusive
fitness maximization.®
The variables in Equation 5.1 define the scope and efficiency of the
identification mechanism. They sketch, in broad outlines, how cognitive and
emotive predispositions interact with socioenvironmental factors. They
convey that the identification mechanism consists of interactive, non-
deterministic processes between epigenetic predispositions and environment.
And, with appropriate theoretical and empirical measurement, they could be
operationalized and tested, using multivariate statistical techniques, to
quantify a range of values associated with GB.
Should they fail to allow the identification mechanism to function,
individuals may cease to identify with the larger group in question. How
might this happen? It could arise from a serious lack of congruence of the
recognition markers, a loss of affective ties with the recognition markers, or
an inappropriately large group size. Indeed, variables in Equation 5.1 can
reinforce one another negatively. For example, an increase in group size
could reduce the congruence of the recognition markers. This tends to happen
when in-group membership includes speakers of a different language.
Language as a recognition marker then falls out of step with other markers.
Should this happen, the affective intensity associated with the notion that the
larger group has a common descent may weaken. Negative reinforcement of
this kind may thus seriously compromise the functioning of the identification
mechanism in the given group context. The end result might be that
individuals would realign themselves into smaller groups. These smaller
groups would represent a new foci where recognition markers, group size,
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 105

FIGURE 5.2. The identification mechanism as a mental map (effective identification).

Legend: 000, Group size boundary; . _—_. —, relatively strong affec-
tive intensity.

Chiefdom

Nucleus .
Ethnic group~

Individual

Beliefs Phenotypic
of common characteristics
descent

and affective intensity tend toward congruency, at least in sufficient strength

to enable the identification mechanism to function.

THE IDENTIFICATION MECHANISM AS A MENTAL MAP

From the individual’s perspective, the identification mechanism can be

thought of as a mental map. This is illustrated graphically in Figure 5.2. The
individual and his or her nucleus ethnic group are located at the center. The
series of concentric circles represents levels of social organization. They
generally correspond to the evolution of group size and organization as
illustrated by Lewellen (1983) and discussed in chapter 3. The five
recognition markers are contained in boxes. The broken lines represent the
affective intensities linking the individual’s inclusive fitness concerns with
each recognition marker. Group size is the boundary area demarcated by the
dotted line which links the five recognition markers.
106 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Figure 5.2 deliberately depicts a situation in which the identification

mechanism functions very effectively. Observe that all five recognition
markers rest on the circumference of the same circle. In this case, there is
complete congruence of the recognition markers at the level of statehood.
The state demarcates the boundary of the in-group which, in this case, is the
in-group’s homeland. In common with all other members of the state, the
individual shares the same language, religion, homeland, phenotypic charac-
teristics, and belief of common descent. Affective intensity with respect to all
five recognition markers is present and relatively strong. Therefore, the
individual’s inclusive fitness concerns are firmly, emotively linked with the
state as the larger group. Such a situation is often referred to as an “ethnically
homogeneous society” or a nation-state in the sociological and political
science literature (more on this later).
From the individual’s viewpoint, Figure 5.2 depicts a situation of no
uncertainty concerning the significance and value of the larger group to
inclusive fitness maximization. Cognitive and emotive processes in the
identification mechanism interact to produce strong, natural cohesion. In
chapter 7, we identify and examine five such societies: Japan, the Afrikaners,
Afghanistan, Iran, and Israel. In each case we argue that mobilization against
out-groups can be easily mustered and that vestiges of humanity’s propensity
for warfare are highly visible.
In Figure 5.3 we construct a very different situation. The meanings of the
concentric circles remain the same as in Figure 5.2. The location of the
recognition markers, however, indicates incongruence. The individual now
perceives that only three recognition markers are shared with individuals at
his or her band level. These are religion, homeland, and the belief of common
descent. Consequently, common language is shared with a larger number of
people at the tribal level. As for phenotypic characteristics, the individual
perceives commonalities with a still larger number of people. But the size of
the larger group remains at the level of the state, not the individual’s
homeland per se. This means that state organizations have demarcated a
territorial group size that individuals are supposed to share with others with
whom they have little in common. That is, many territorially defined in-
group members are phenotypically different. Many more of them speak a
different language. Still more of them have a different religion. And it is with
only a small subgroup of people that the individual shares the belief of
common descent and homeland.
In terms of affective intensity, Figure 5.3 also reveals that the individual
feels differently about the recognition markers. That is, the individual’s
affective ties with two markers are shared with different groups of people. In
such a situation, functions of the identification mechanism are seriously
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 107

FIGURE 5.3 The identification mechanism as a mental map (ineffective identification).

Legend: 000, Group size boundary; __ . __ . __, relatively strong affective
intensity; ————,, relatively weak affective intensity.

GO. 2 fe}

Belief
of common
Nucleus :
4
°
descent
~Ethnie group
Band

impeded given “unnatural” territorial state boundaries of the larger group.

As examples of the situation depicted in Figure 5.3, chapter 6 examines
multiethnic states in Africa. It shows that postcolonial developments have
confounded optimal functioning of the identification mechanism at the level
of the state. The result has been weak internal cohesion at the state level,
strong internal cohesion at the level of “cultural ethnic groups” (defined
later), and unceasing intergroup conflict, particularly in the form of coups
d’état.

PREFERRED-GROUP MEMBERSHIP

A major implication of our model is that the identification mechanism tends

to work most effectively when groups have specific configurations of
characteristics. The most desirable situation, involving congruence and
minimal ambiguity, is depicted in Figure 5.2. As stated previously, such a
108 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

society is commonly referred to in the literature as an ethnically homoge-

neous society or a nation-state (Deutsch 1953; Connor 1972; Brass 1976). It
tends to be internally cohesive, has a strong group boundary, and is a key
player in most nationalistic and independence-related political struggles and
conflict (van den Berghe 1981; A. D. Smith 1981a,b). We call it a “cultural
ethnic group” to distinguish it from a nucleus ethnic group.”
In a cultural ethnic group, mobilization can appeal to a wide range of
shared characteristics, including a high degree of convergence among
recognition markers and strong emotional attachment to them. As we shall
see in chapter 7, nationalism is a prevalent vehicle for group mobilization in
this context. The boundary of the state and the boundary of the cultural
ethnic group are one and the same. The nation, as a political community,
therefore emerges as a politicized cultural ethnic group.
Multiethnic societies, on the other hand, represent drastically different
situations. The boundary of a multiethnic society encompasses members of
different cultural ethnic groups. Nationalism does not lend itself to group
mobilization in such a context. Instead, as we shall see in chapter 7,
patriotism has evolved as a mobilization device. Patriotism attempts to rally
people around the state, with its territorial boundary, mode of government,
ideology, and membership based on citizenship. Since the identification
mechanism performs far less efficiently in multiethnic societies due to greater
ambiguity and the absence of important recognition markers such as belief in
common descent, we would also anticipate patriotism to be less effective as a
mobilization device.
Of course, multiethnic societies themselves can be separated into
different types, thus rendering patriotism relatively more or less effective as a
mobilization device. One prevalent type is the immigrant society exemplified
by the United States of America. Patriotism in the United States is relatively
strong because it is not in competition with nationalism. With the exception
of the blacks brought in by slavery, U.S. citizens are voluntary immigrants.
They may have originated from different cultural ethnic groups, but no
cultural ethnic group per se competes with the state today for the loyalty and
allegiance of U.S. citizens.
An alternate type of multiethnic society has evolved through conquest, as
in the case of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Patriotism in the USSR
is generally weak because it is in competition with nationalism of ethnic
minorities. Citizens in the USSR, for example, are not only members of the
state, they also form different cultural ethnic groups. Many of these groups
are sufficiently politicized that they assert varying degrees of nationalism.
Nationalism thus competes with patriotic appeals (on behalf of the state), for
individual loyalty and allegiance.
 The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 109

CONCLUSION

The identification mechanism is constantly on the lookout to serve inclusive

fitness priorities when membership in a larger group is in question. In this
respect, it is universal, a part of the epigenetic apparatus of every individual.
Yet, it is not deterministic. Its cognitive and emotive processes extract
information from constantly changing environments, all the while striving to
prescribe preferred group membership with minimal ambiguity. Once the
preferred group is decided upon, appropriate targets of directed learning with
regards to xenophobia, ethnocentrism and in-group amity/out-group enmity
will become apparent. Indeed, in an environment shaped by balance-of-
power considerations (chapter 3), such targets seem to emerge as the natural
order of things.
(The identification mechanism plays a critical role in humanity’s propen-
\ sity for warfare because it has allowed inclusive fitness priorities, allegiances
’ to groups, and self-sacrificial behavior found in nucleus ethnic groups to be
) transferred to ever-larger groups. It embodies mutually reinforcing psycho-
/ logical processes which maintain in-group amity/out-group enmity as groups
have evolved from band to tribes, chiefdoms, nations, and multiethnic states.
As in previous chapters, we formalize the role and functions of the
identification mechanism in several assumptions:

Assumption 5.1. Over evolutionary time, individuals have identified

with groups larger than their nucleus ethnic group due to balance-of-power
considerations. They have done so voluntarily or through coercion (that is,
defeat and forced amalgamation with conqueror).
Assumption 5.2. To belong to and fight for a larger group, priorities of
inclusive fitness maximization and related biases in mental development must
be linked with priorities and choices in the cultural environment.
Assumption 5.3. Over evolutionary time, linkages presumed by
Assumption 5.2 have been accommodated, psychologically, by an identifica-
tion mechanism. The identification mechanism operates continually to
answer two questions: To what group should the individual belong to and
fight for, assuming choices are available? If choices are not available, if
membership in a larger group such as a state is mandatory, with what degree
of intensity and commitment should the individual serve that group in
warfare?
Assumption 5.4. To answer the questions in Assumption 5.3, the
identification mechanism extracts information from cultural environments
via two cognitive processes: reification and heuristics. The message of these
cognitive processes — to identify with a particular group or not — is
110 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

reinforced by emotive processes. Cognition and emotion work simul-

taneously to produce powerful group allegiances. They are part of the
epigenetic apparatus of all individuals.
Assumption 5.5. The identification mechanism is not necessarily deter-
ministic. There is no innately driven preference for any particular larger
group. Rather, it operates to select a preferred group from the choices
available. The identification mechanism does, however, operate universally
to select a preferred group from the choices, if any, available.
Assumption 5.6. The identification mechanism operates best to identify
preferred-group membership when groups are naturally cohesive. Natural
cohesion arises when five recognition markers are in congruence and
intensity of emotion concerning these recognition markers is strong. The
recognition markers are common phenotypes, descent, language, homeland,
and religion.
Assumption 5.7. When one or more of the five recognition markers are
“out of step” or not present, ambiguity presents itself to the cognitive and
emotive processes in the identification mechanism. Allegiance to the larger
group is automatically weakened.
Assumption 5.8. The identification mechanism tends to function most
effectively (least ambiguity) in an ethnically homogeneous society. (We call
such a society a cultural ethnic group to distinguish it from a nucleus ethnic
group in the development of our theory.)
Assumption 5.9. When the identification mechanism operates in situa-
tions of nonambiguity (cultural ethnic groups), strong nationalism results.
Inclusive fitness priorities are well aligned with interests of the larger group,
in-group amity/out-group enmity is easily transferred to the larger group’s
boundaries, mobilization for conflict against out-groups is relatively easy, .
and continuities in humanity’s propensity for warfare are highly visible.
Assumption 5.10. When the identification mechanism operates in
situations of ambiguity, such as multiethnic states, group cohesiveness is
threatened. In environments shaped by balance-of-power considerations, this
becomes problematic — a noncohesive group may not be trusted by its
members to foster and protect inclusive fitness priorities.
Assumption 5.11. When group cohesion is threatened, the identification
mechanism will tend to direct membership and allegiance to a subgroup, thus
fostering intergroup strife, secessionist movements within the larger group,
and perhaps civil war. To avoid this, cultural incentives must be introduced to
foster and protect inclusive fitness priorities. In this case, patriotism is
typically used by leaders to promote group cohesion and mobilize for
warfare.
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 111

These assumptions set the stage for a radical reinterpretation of conflict

and warfaring propensities in contemporary society. They cast new light on
coups d’état in Africa, the subject of chapter 6. And when combined with
sections entitled “Inclusive Fitness Logic of Nationalism” and “Inclusive
Fitness Logic of Patriotism” in chapter 7, they provide new insights into
nationalism and patriotism as mobilization devices in humanity’s propensity
for warfare.
Finally, we should reemphasize that the identification mechanism does
not embody hard-wired psychological processes that are genetically pro-
grammed and leave no role for accumulated social knowledge in human
action. Its cognitive processes extract information from the cultural and
physical environment, much of which is contained in systems of knowledge.
Knowledge includes findings and confirmations of systematized sciences. It
also includes culture-specific concepts and ideas. Knowledge is also central to
how we are socialized, communicate, and share information.® In contrast
with the signaling systems of nonhuman animals, human communication
employs shared meanings which presuppose the learning of linguistic
symbols. In short, rather than interacting with the environment directly,
humans act on information about the environment that is communicated by
systems of social knowledge.

NOTES

1. Lumsden and Wilson’s model has been generally received as a systematic, comprehen-
sive attempt at bridging the gap between genetic and cultural evolution (van den Berghe 1982b).
Williams (1982) observes that it is one of the few serious efforts to incorporate concepts, facts,
and data from the social sciences into a coherent scheme for understanding human biological and
cultural evolution. Lumsden and Wilson’s model is relevant to our endeavor here because it
addresses the neurological and psychological processes of human cognition and decision
making. Alternative approaches by Boyd and Richardson (1985) and Rindos (1985, 1986) have
either failed to develop the “epigenesis of the mind” in detail or have been criticized as being
saddled with conceptual and epistemological difficulties (Carneiro 1985; Kunkel 1985).
Therefore, in spite of data scarcity and the tentative nature of many of Lumsden and Wilson’s
constructs (Schubert 1982; Van Gulick 1982), we draw on their approach to develop the
cognitive dimension of the identification mechanism.
2. Reification can be further illustrated by reconstructing the logic of totemistic
classification developed by Leach (1976) and cited in Meyer (1987, 90). Leach singles out five
steps: (i) “We are all members of one social group because we are descended from a ‘common
ancestor’ is initially an ‘idea’ in the mind.” (ii) “Similarly ‘they are all members of one social
group because they are descended from a common ancestor’ is initially an idea ‘in the mind.’ ”
(iii) “‘ ‘These white birds are Eaglehawks, those black birds are Crows’ are classificatory
statements belonging to the context of non-human nature.” (iv) “ “We’ differ from ‘they’ as
‘Eaglehawks’ differ from ‘Crows’ is a simple metaphor.” (v) “ “We are Eaglehawks because our
112 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

first ancestor was an Eaglehawk; they are Crows because their first ancestor was a Crow’ is a
‘logical’ sequence of collapsing (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv).”
It is easy to see that Eaglehawk and Crow greatly simplify and dramatize differences
between “‘we” and “they.” In addition, the notion of “we” as an in-group acquires a deeper
meaning when equated to Eaglehawks. Suddenly we all seem to be closer and have more in
common. In fact, we are family. This exemplifies reification as expressed by self-objectification.
This is precisely Vine’s point when he notes that “The profound significance of self-
objectification is that it permits a new mode of social relatedness to operate among members ofa
group of interacting individuals” (1987, 65).
3. Though analytically distinct, heuristics and reification complement one another in the
identification mechanism. Recall that reification sorts out and condenses unorganized and piece-
meal perceptions of stimuli into categories. These are often abstract and symbolic. When such
abstract categories and symbols are used as guides in decision making they are known as
heuristics. So far, the two are distinct. On examining the process of reification more closely,
however, it becomes apparent that results of reification can predetermine the ways in which they
can be used as heuristics. Consider, for example, the mental image of “brothers in arms”. It
describes a group of people bound by a common purpose, siblinglike, bonded in the crucible of
bloodshed and conflict. To the extent that a group could be reified symbolically as brothers in
arms, the mental image of brothers in arms would also serve as a heuristic device to direct the
mind to perceive the group as solid, trustworthy, and reliable for protection of one’s nucleus
ethnicity. Conversely, when a group of people is reified as an evil empire, there is no question as
to how an evil empire, as a heuristic device, would direct the mind in decision making. Thus,
reification and heuristics can work hand in hand as integral parts of the cognitive dimension of
the identification mechanism. And by processing information into value-laden symbols and
categories, they influence the mind to decisively classify individuals and groups as real or
potential allies or enemies.
4. Isaac’s conclusions are consistent with Buck’s (1985) argument that the motivational/
emotional process can be activated by reified cognitive stimuli as if they were sensory
perceptions. Buck shows that “challenging stimuli” that activate behavior via the motivational/
emotional process may come in the form of abstract linguistic terms and concepts. These terms
and concepts are filtered through cognitive processes such as reification and heuristics. Thus he
observes, “In humans, our larger analytic cognitive capacity — combined with the revolutionary
impact of language — underlies a great repertoire of motivational and emotional phenomena”’
(1985, 404).
5. van den Berghe (1986) has suggested that identification with larger groups, particularly
in complex industrialized societies, is largely a result of manipulation of the masses by the elite.
That is, from an inclusive fitness point of view, it is the elite’s inclusive fitness that benefits while
the rest of the society’s members’ inclusive fitness suffers. This identification, van den Berghe
argues, results in a kind of “false consciousness.” We disagree with his interpretation. We do not
deny that false consciousness may be involved when one’s identification with the group may not
optimize his or her inclusive fitness. There is always the possibility of miscalculation on the part
of the individual. Coercion may also play an important role in persuading the individual to be
obedient. But, in the long run, group mobilization will be successful and effective only when the
majority of group members believe, rightly or wrongly, that their respective inclusive fitness is
advanced by the group they identify with (G. R. Johnson 1986b). In our conceptual framework,
manipulation and coercion without proper functioning of the identification mechanism would
lead to failure at times of group mobilization. Eventually, this would lead to fragmentation of the
group into competing subgroups.
6. In situations where there are no realistic choices, we can also specify when an individual
(1) would be willing to sacrifice for the larger group, or (2) refuse to participate voluntarily in
The Identification Mechanism — the Critical Linkage 113

aggression/warfare in defense of the group. Assume the larger group in question is G,, with
variables RM,, Alj,, and GS,. The identification mechanism is represented by Equation 5.2, and
the bond felt by the individual is represented by GB(G,)

GB(G,) = f(IM) [RM,, Alj,, GS,]. (5.2)

To determine willingness to sacrifice for the larger group, threshold conditions a and b must be
specified. Assume there is a continuum of possible values GB(G,) ranging from zero to infinity.
Assume also that if the actual value of GB(G,) falls between two threshold values (aand b) onthe
continuum, this indicates a relatively strong attachment to the welfare of the larger group G,.
Thus, if a< GB(G,) < b, the individual’s bond to group G, is sufficiently strong that he or she is
willing to sacrifice for the defense of the group. Alternatively, when GB(G,.) <a the individual’s
bond to the group G, is weak, sufficiently so that he or she is not prepared to participate
voluntarily to defend the group. The threshold parameters a and b cannot be determined
theoretically. Different configurations of RM, Al, and GS must be measured in situations of
group mobilization and conflict to determine their value empirically.
7. Adam and Moodley (1986), as well as many others, observe that cultural ethnicity is
based on a feeling of commonality in terms of language, religion, or particularities of cultural
practices. The latter include shared values and outlook which are identity-forming factors.
Religious beliefs tend to prescribe rules of endogamy and exclusion, which in turn perpetuate
group boundaries. In addition, notions of origin and ancestry are highly effective criteria that
shape the collective group identity. Cultural ethnicity takes on economic significance when
economic inequalities coincide with boundaries of cultural ethnic groups. Cultural ethnicity can
also be politicized when political privileges are institutionalized in the practice of law or in the
State.
8. To examine how kin selection and altruism may be linked, G. R. Johnson (1986a)
focuses on the relationship between patriotic socialization and kin recognition. He identifies two
mechanisms — association and phenotypic matching — as being fundamental to patriotic
socialization. In Johnson’s terms, association refers to familiarity resulting from frequent
interaction, whereas phenotypic matching refers to familiarity based on appearance. We submit
that the five recognition markers, as mechanisms of kin recognition, subsume association and
phenotypic matching. As for the relationship between kin recognition and patriotic socialization,
it is also embodied in the recognition markers language, homeland, and beliefs of common
descent.
a
Boek.
PART Ill

Reinterpreting the Empirical

Record: An Overview
To apply our theory to contemporary conflict/warfare is to undertake a
radical interpretation of a vast empirical literature on the subject. The
interpretation is radical because analyses of warfare which emphasize recent
cultural evolution and sociopolitical change are recast into a new framework
— one that stresses the continuities of humanity’s evolutionary past. In so
doing, it is useful to think of our theory as a prism. Prisms decompose white
light into a great many component colors. Four of these represent basic
colors. In analogous fashion, our theoretical prism has decomposed human-
ity’s propensity for warfare into four basic elements. While not denying the
presence of more contemporary causes/functions, these four elements are
primary forces responsible for central tendencies in warfaring propensities.
Other causes/functions are of secondary importance insofar as they interact
with primary forces and are situation specific.
To show that our theoretical prism is necessary for understanding
warfare propensities today, we must establish that its basic or key elements
continue to find powerful expression. They may do so directly when tight knit
kin groups are involved (for example, primitive warfare) or indirectly and
covertly in heterogeneous or ethnically plural societies (for example,
interstate warfare). In contexts of primitive warfare, we have already
illustrated the direct relevance of inclusive fitness and nepotistic altruism
(chapter 2). In this part of the book, we turn to more complex societies to
show that covert manifestations of our theoretical building blocks are ever
present. Chapter 6 does so by examining causes of African coups d’état.
These upheavals employ military threats or force to transfer political power
by extraparliamentary means from one “‘power group” to another. While
controlling for many variables thought to influence the probability of coups
d’état, we show that cultural ethnicity is the dominant cause of intergroup
violence in Africa. In this case, we argue that cultural ethnicity — with strong
roots in biological kinship — represents an optimal grouping. This grouping
is maintained by the identification mechanism which covertly represents
inclusive fitness.
116 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Chapter 7 undertakes a related exercise. It shows that nationalism and

patriotism are contemporary vestiges of humanity’s propensity for warfare.
Their potency, as forces in interstate and superpower conflicts, is a product of
the successful operation of the identification mechanism in nation-states and
multiethnic states, respectively. In this case, individual biases toward conflict/
warfare, as described in Appendix I, are shown to be active at the level of
modern nations and states. This is because the identification mechanism
renders humanity’s propensity for warfare a continuing, ominous presence
despite the explosive rates of cultural evolution today. Chapter 7 also
examines conditions under which individual predispositions toward conflict
can be manipulated by nationalistic and patriotic leaders to mobilize
seemingly unrelated individuals to war.
Evidence presented in chapters 6 and 7 does not conclusively substantiate
our theory. It is consistent with it. Nor do we formulate specific hypotheses,
collect data, and undertake rigorous empirical tests to confirm or refute the
validity of our theoretical constructs. Unfortunately, data required for such a
task are as yet unavailable. Thus, the radical interpretation undertaken here is
meant to illustrate how our theory can provide new and useful insights into
contemporary global and regional conflicts, thereby setting the stage for a
new policy approach.
CHAPTER 6

African Coups d’Etat

How do you explain a continent where hundreds of thousands of people have been
killed for no other reason than they belonged to the wrong tribe?
{David Lamb 1987]

INTRODUCTION

Africa is a land of unstable political regimes. In a continent of 500 million

people and 51 countries, military coups d’état and violence have transferred
power from one influential group to another much more frequently than have
elections or other forms of constitutionally sanctioned regime changes
(Johnson et al. 1984). Military coups brought about a change of power in
approximately 55 percent of sub-Saharan African states between 1960 and
1982 (Table 6.1). During this time, there were also 56 attempted coups and
102 reported coup plots. Successful coups, attempted coups, and coup plots
thus numbered 210, affecting 84 percent of the 45 indigenously governed
states of sub-Saharan Africa. By 1984, the total number of coups, plots, and
so on had risen from 210 to 230, an average of almost 10 per year between
1960 and 1984. There is no comparable situation elsewhere in the world.
Many theoretical perspectives have been developed to explain political
upheaval and instability in this newly independent continent. Marxist
theorists emphasize class conflict. Proponents of the pluralist tradition
emphasize differential representation of competing groups in the political
process. Others argue that violence in Africa is merely a continuation of pre-
colonial days when African societies were riddled by a warrior tradition and
stable sociopolitical identities were the exception (Mazrui 1977a; Uzoigwe
1977). Rather than assess these broad theoretical traditions, our aim is to
focus on a particular kind of political behavior: military coups d’état and the
variables correlated with them. In doing so, literature is selectively reviewed
to illustrate our theory at work.
118 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

TABLE 6.1
African Coups d’Etat, 1960-1982
ee SE ee — ee

Successful Attempted Reported

coups coups coup plots Total
eee eS
Number a 56 102 210
Average number per
country with
some coup
activity 1.4 sHe5 ZA. 5.6
Average number per
all countries
surveyed
(N = 45) UZ 12 pee} 4.7

Source: Adapted from T. H. Johnson et al. (1984).

African coups d’état provide a useful test of our theory for several
reasons. They. involve.intergroup conflict which is more complex than
primitive warfare, as.examined in chapter 2, yet less complex than
intercountry or superpower conflict to be examined.in chapter. 7..African
coups d’état involve amalgamations or alliances of individuals larger than
nucleus ethnic groups. The unit involved is typically a cultural ethnic group.
As defined in chapter 5, cultural ethnic groups are the foci of a high level of
congruence_among recognition markers, imbued with strong affective
intensity. They tend to be internally cohesive, have strong group boundaries,
and are key players in most nationalistic and independence-related political
struggles and conflicts.
We hypothesize that African coups d’état can be explained largely by the
prominence of cultural ethnic groups in African sociopolitical realities. They
serve as effective vehicles for channeling individual inclusive fitness biases
toward aggression and conflict. In other words, in many postcolonial African
countries, the identification mechanism works most effectively when direct-
ing individuals to identify with his or her cultural ethnic group rather.than
with the state.
Sociopolitical environments in postcolonial Africa have also been
manipulated in such a way as to aggravate intergroup conflict. This
introduces an ‘“‘environmental complexity” into the analysis that was not
prevalent in our review of primitive warfare (chapter 2). In particular, the
apparatus of European statehood and the rhetoric of nation-state building
have been levied on Africa by colonial powers with little appreciation for
African Coups d’Etat 119

continuities of African society. These continuities involve ethnic and tribal

allegiances, which are rooted in beliefs of common descent. We argue that
failure of this apparatus to impose order is entirely consistent with our
theory. The identification mechanism has directed allegiance not to European
statehood but to nationalistic subgroups where security, reliability, and
inclusive fitness have been traditionally served.
Finally, analysis of African coups d’état places assumptions of our theory
in stark contrast to those of so-called modernization theory. The prevalence
ofintergroup conflict in Africa has surprised many modern theorists. Surprise
stems from faulty assumptions which have advocated that purely cultural
manipulation, particularly nation-building strategies such as industrializa-
tion, urbanization and education, would weaken tribalism and ethnicity as
forces in politics. In contrast, we emphasize the continuity of ultimate utilities
which reinforce in-group cohesion among cultural ethnic groups in Africa.
These foster out-group enmity and conflict for reins of state power when
interests of the cultural ethnic group are neglected.
To understand why past explanations of African coups d’état are
inadequate we must do two things. First, we must compensate for a
theoretical tradition on the causes of political conflict which, until recently,
has ignored the continuities and prominence of kinship and ethnicity in
Africa. Why is this important? Welch (1977, 82) critically observes that
political scientists tend to view the state as a “compulsory association with a
territorial basis” in which “the use of force is regarded as legitimate only so
far as it is either permitted by the state or prescribed by it.’ Following this
tradition, explanation of coups d’état tends to be sought in the failure of an
administration to fulfill its constitutional obligations or in economic
pressures that a particular administration has failed to solve. This view of the
state provides an overly contemporary, superficial explanation. The onus,
then, is to explain both how continuities in precolonial Africa have been
carried over to postcolonial Africa and why they motivate coups d’état.
Second, we must demonstrate empirically that Africa’s past, in terms of
continual strength and prominence of cultural ethnic groups, impacts
independently.as.well.as interactively. with other.sociopolitical-influences to
affect the probability of coups d’état. Independent effects are emphasized
because our theory focuses on ultimate utilities and variables thought to have
relatively stable, lasting effects. At the same time, ultimate utilities interact
with new, progressively more complex cultural environments. To differenti-
ate independent effects (ultimate utilities) from more proximate ones, we
must use proxy theoretical variables thought to be central to coup activity
across countries and over time. A “factoring out” process requires that
multivariate techniques be applied to data at hand. Fortunately, two
120 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

quantitative studies of African coups d’état are available, permitting us to

assess the relevance of a key variable in our theory.
Though coups d’état in Africa may appear ostensibly different from
warfare, it is reasonable to treat them as_a special case of warfare. By
definition, African coups d’état are made possible by..the legacy of the
European state. Were this legacy not present, coups d’état would likely be
replaced by more direct intergroup warfare involving the same kinds of
groups now struggling for reins of state power. Moreover, were coups d'état
not a workable means-of transferring power-in-Africa, civil war along ethnic
lines would undoubtedly be more prevalent.

CONTINUITIES: ORIGINS IN PRECOLONIAL AFRICA

Few scholars underscore the importance of continuities in African history

more than the political scientist Ali Mazrui (1969, 1977a, 1980). Blindness to
continuities of African history, argues Mazrui, is particularly prevalent
among political scientists and economists. “Among political scientists the
study of ‘modernization,’ until recently, was characterized by a belief that the
changes inaugurated by the colonial experience had their own momentum,
were desirable, and were almost irreversible. Political scientists were so
preoccupied with studying political change that they virtually forgot how to
study political continuity” (Mazrui 1977a, 1).
Mazrui has focused on the so-called warrior tradition in Africa. He
defines this tradition as a set of values and institutionalized expectations
which define the military role of the individual in the defence of his or her
society, the martial criteria of adulthood, and the symbolic obligations of
manhood at times of political or military stress. This tradition, he argues,
encompasses means of production (land and animals), sexuality involving
virility and marriage, religion and the invocation of supernatural forces,
aesthetics (song and dance), and political systems of authority and allegiance.
The warrior tradition bears on the whole issue of the origins of the state in
Africa and how these origins relate to military factors in historical evolution.
Continuities of Mazrui’s warrior tradition, including recent manifesta-
tions of a distinct military class, have been postulated as a raison d’étre for
African coups d’état. As we shall see later, this interpretation is narrow and
misleading. What is relevant, however, are the forces associated with the
warrior tradition and the sociopsychological processes which have rein-
forced it. Mazrui identifies kinship and ethnicity as foremost among these
forces, thus providing a link with our theory.
African Coups d’Etat 12%

Without the help of kin selection or inclusive fitness theory (our first
building block), Mazrui asks the right questions concerning the origins of
human organization. Drawing on the work of Walter (1969), he applies four
categories (the first three of which have roots in kinship and common
descent) to understand the nature of fundamental societal organization: (1)
the band, (2) the tribe, (3) the chiefdom, and (4) statehood. The latter form of
social organization usually includes coercion and reins of power obtained by
constitutional means, rather than ancestry.
Mazrui submits that the first three categories, each having primordial
implications, help track both the origins of human organization and the
degree to which political functions have emerged out of roles originally tied to
the extended family. He goes on to argue that two forms of survival have been
at stake in the history of human collectivization — economic and military
survival. It was military survival that gave the ultimate push to the
politicization of the individual, including allegiances beyond bands to tribes
and, eventually, chiefdoms. These allegiances served to counter threats from
ever-growing competitor groups. By virtue of this reasoning, Mazrui
anticipates the second building block in our theory as well: groups as forces of
selection.
In charting the growth of group allegiances, Mazrui submits that a
warrior tradition and the politicization of kinship really began at the tribal
level of organization: initiation into adulthood often included initiation into
martial virtues, the organization and function of warriors became an integral
part of the polity, and men became politically preeminent because they were
militarily preeminent. They were so “because of an old factor in primordial
kinship culture which gave the club or the spear to the spouse with greater
muscular throwing power” (Mazrui 1977b, 11).
The next stage involves nationhood. Just as aggregations of families led
to the first prepolitical societies, Mazrui argues that aggregations of small
societies gradually led to the emergence of nations:
The bond of union within the group started by being a belief or fiction of
common descent, and the myth or origin sacralized a common ancestor. The
transition first from family to tribe, and then to nation was, in the words of
Maine, “‘a system of concentric circles which have gradually expanded from the
same point.” [Mazrui 1977b, 11]

It is at this point, however, that Mazrui parts company with the historical
tradition of Maine (1875). Maine and followers viewed the transition to
nationhood as involving a transition from bonds of kinship to the boundaries
of territory. As Mazrui correctly points out, such views grossly underrepre-
sented the continuing residual power of kinship:
122 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Territory has not replaced kinship as a basis of allegiance; it has simply

introduced a new way of defining kinship. Territoriality is an extension of the old
methods by which new members of a society were absorbed by an allocation of
artificial kinship roles. Territoriality provides a broader definition of kinship, but
by no means supplants it [Mazrui 1977b, 12]

Mazrui’s emphasis on kinship in the emergence of nations is thus

consistent with our theoretical perspective. African nationhood is politicized
cultural ethnicity reinforced with a clear territorial definition. Its internal
cohesion is maintained because the identification mechanism functions most
effectively in the context of African cultural ethnic groups. It is in his or her
respective cultural ethnic group that the average African finds his or her
“terminal community” — the optimal social grouping in which the highest
degree of convergence of cultural and ethnic markers is obtained and
traditional emotive bonds are anchored.
By applying this evolutionary perspective to African societies, Mazrui
sets the stage for understanding the seeds of contemporary dissent. On the
one hand, continuities of the warrior tradition and politicization of the
military were most tightly aligned with kin groups. In these groups,
allegiances were strong because they have traditionally served priorities of
economic and military survival. On the other hand, importation of European
statehood was arbitrary and uncorrelated with existing cultural ethnic group
boundaries. Additionally, it brought with it the doctrine that the military
must be apolitical. Successful evolution to statehood would thus require that
an “ethnic” or “tribal” nation give up control of something crucial to
survival. Unless the state as a terminal community were to promise something
superior to cultural ethnicity, our theory would predict an impossible alliance
between continuities of African nationhood and vestiges of European
statehood. That is, it is unlikely the identification mechanism would identify
the state as the most secure and reliable group with which alliances would
most effectively maximize individual inclusive fitness. This raises questions
about the nature and appeal of European statehood.

STATEHOOD AND COLONIALISM

The idea of the nation-state, in which both nation and state are supposed to
be one and the same, is Europe’s most enduring legacy to Africa (Mazrui and
Tidy 1984). It is an outgrowth of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 (which
ended the internecine Thirty Years’ War in Europe), upon which the
superstructures of world diplomacy and international relations came to be
African Coups d’Etat 123

constructed (Mazrui 1983). Yet, African countries were the last to be

admitted to this community of nation-states. Moreover, Europe’s transfer of
its state system to Africa was accomplished through conquest and colonial-
ism. Any prior calculation to make statehood coincident with nationhood
was absent. This is immensely important because the state per se is a political
entity wherein a group of people claim authority over others who are neither
kin nor spouses in both the real and putative sense as well as over the territory
occupied by them (van den Berghe 1983b).
Consider for a moment the role of the state in postcolonial Africa. As
“manager’’ it can be used by a dominant political class or party to deal with
such critical tasks affecting ethnicity as the mediation of intergroup
competition, the enforcement of basic rules of interaction between groups,
the recruitment of elites into the political and economic systems, and the
mobilization and distribution of resources. And, in its role as controller, a
dominant political class or party employs the power of state institutions to
coerce compliance in the name of the community at large (Rothchild and
Olorunsola 1983a). The problem in Africa is that a brief, foreign process of
colonization attempted to levy the apparatus of European statehood
(including the constitutional processes of gaining power) on competing
ethnic—nationalistic groups that have long controlled themselves and
resolved resource disputes through conflict and warfare.
In addition, the apparatus of statehood was installed by colonial powers
in ways that aggravated interethnic or international tensions, or, alter-
natively, underestimated the significance of cultural ethnicity. Nigeria is a
case in point. In 1960, Chief Obafemi Awolowo acknowledged that Nigeria
was merely a British creation. Shortly thereafter, its first prime minister,
Abubaker Tufawa Balewa, championed that Britain had succeeded in uniting
squabbling villages and making a nation of them. What the British had really
done, however, was to pull together three groups, each internally hetero-
geneous, into a federal structure of extremely doubtful viability. Phillips, a
political scientist, illustrates their differences (see Table 6.2), differences
which continue to fuel discontent and conflict today.
The British also manipulated the state to segregate ethnic groups. This
often resulted in the creation of tribal reserves and emphasized rudiments of
tribal homelands. According to Mazrui (1983), British racism in this case
helped to encourage and reify African tribalism. Alternately, Mazrui points
out that the French were less racially biased than the British but were more
culturally arrogant. By assuming that Africa was a tabula rasa, a clean slate
on which all new things could be written, the French made the mistake of
assuming that theirs was the only truly valid culture to be bequeathed to the
Africans.
124 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

TABLE 6.2
Major Historical and Cultural Characteristics of the Three Dominant Ethnic Groups
of Nigeria BE OE ge Se SS Se
op Sp 2h ENE

Hausa—Fulani Yoruba Ibo

Theocratic state Constitutional monarchy Acephalous society

Despotic Paternal Parademocratic
Autocratic Checks and balances Rule by compromise
Dynastic rule Dispersed power source Dispersed power source
Ascriptive orientation Ascriptive and Achievement orientation
achievement orientation
Highly hierarchical Rank consciousness Egalitarian
Cooperative Competitive Highly competitive
Some urbanization High urbanization No urbanization
High social stratification Social stratification Theoretically classless
Strong sense of sacred Fusion of sacred and Fusion of sacred and
secular secular
Highly conformist Conformist Individualistic
Extreme deference to Deference to authority Weak deference to
authority authority
Resistance to Receptive to modernization Strongly receptive to
modernization modernization
Strong pan-North values Strong pan- Yoruba values Strong pan-Nigeria values
Muslim dominated Muslim—Pagan—Christian Christian—Pagan
Low mass literacy High mass literacy High mass literacy
Loyalty to ‘Northern Loyalty to ‘Action Group’ Loyalty to National
Peoples Congress’ Council for Nigeria and
the Cameroons

Source: Phillips (1984, 156).

What the British and French were to learn, despite much nation-state
rhetoric, was that an unexpectedly deep rift separated the forces of ethnic
attachment and claims of the state. Is this rift attributable to an insufficient
process of colonization, one that might have annihilated continuities of the
past more effectively? For instance, it is true that the European colonization
process did not proceed nearly as far as in Latin America. This can be
attributed in part to a rigid caste system which impeded interbreeding
between Europeans and Africans, in part to the fact that the African
population was not decimated by pandemics as Amerindians were, and to
some extent to the fact that the occupation of the interior of the continent was
but a brief interlude (van den Berghe 1983b). No doubt this is one reason why
postcolonial statehood in Africa has become a very restricted version of
cultural pluralism, one dominated by African ethnic mores, customs, and
strong nationalistic ties.!
African Coups d’Etat 125

CONTINUITIES: EFFECTS IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA

The quintessence of ethnicity and tribalism is the most observable continuity

in postcolonial Africa (Lamb 1987). To account for its persistence, social
scientists are only beginning to reconsider the hypothesis that ethnicity is
rooted in descent, real or putative, and that this is an extension of kinship
(Horowitz 1985). True, human kinship is not always the same as genetic
relatedness, but this does not mean that definitive links do not often exist
between the two. This is especially the case in Africa. Almost all African
societies stress the continuity of their lineage through ancestor cults and
express the calculus of biological relatedness through the structure of lineage,
clan organization, rules of exogamy, religious ritual, and many other features
of social organization. As van den Berghe (1983b, 223) puts it:
If we accept that kinship and marriage (and the social organization derived
from them) are rooted in the human biology of mating and reproductive
behavior, then it is only a small additional step to recognize in ethnicity an
extension of kinship. An ethny is basically a group whose solidarity is based on
common descent.

There are, of course, objections to the idea that cultural ethnicity in

Africa is not far removed from the kinship bonds of the past. One common
objection is that descent is frequently putative rather than real and that,
socially, the myth often matters more than the reality. A second objection is
that to regard cultural ethnic groups, numbering in the tens or even hundreds
of thousands, as extended kin groups is to stretch the notion of kinship to the
point of meaninglessness. Put differently, some social scientists attribute the
irrepressibility of cultural ethnicity to contemporary, cultural forces devoid
of kin selection and inclusive fitness.
With respect to the first objection, it is true that African “ethnies”
evolved into larger and larger groups as human societies became more
technologically complex and politically centralized. The process still con-
tinues today, in Africa and elsewhere. As van den Berghe (1983b) points out,
groups like the Luhya of Kenya and the Yoruba and Ibo of Nigeria, who
today are generally recognized as large ethnies, have only become so in the
last 40 or 50 years (van den Berghe’s large ethny is roughly consistent with
our use of cultural ethnic group; an ethny per se corresponds to our nucleus
ethnic group). A multiplicity of culturally related small ethnies thus coalesced
into larger entities, first in response to colonial conquest, and later in response
to conflict with other “superethnies” over the spoils of independence. During
this process, however, ethnies which managed not only to grow but to
establish themselves as relatively stable entities tended to absorb the peoples
they conquered and extend their definition of common descent:
126 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

In modern parlance, they were successful at “nation-building,” and their

success rested on a combination of two techniques; they extended the definition
of common descent and ethnicity to their conquered neighbors, or even created a
myth of common descent; and they grew by taking in conquered women into
their large polygynous households. Neither technique is unique to Africa, but
Africans really excelled in the statecraft of matrimonial alliances, and especially
in the use of polygyny for nation-building. [van den Berghe 1983b, 225]

The point, then, is that the amalgamation of smaller ethnies into larger
ones has not been an impediment to the development of ethnic solidarity. At
most, it has diffused its impact. As van den Berghe observes, the evolution of
African society saw no sharp discontinuities of scale. Nor has there been a
point at which ethnicity clearly changed its nature and became “something
else.” Levels of kinship and ethnicity are nested and overlap into each other in
African society.
Addressing the objection that ethnic ideologies often employ fictive
myths of common descent, van den Berghe (1983b) draws attention to a
hidden, fallacious assumption in the objection. Is a ‘fiction’ necessarily
arbitrary, unconstrained by external reality, and, therefore, manipulable at
will? Such, he maintains, is not the case:

A fiction only serves its purpose if it is believed in, and in order to be believed
in, it has to be believable. Believability sets definite constraints on myths of
common origin. No European colonial power, for instance, ever convinced any
African group that they shared a common descent. (Indeed, they were generally at
great pains to stress that they did not.) By contrast, two neighboring groups
similar in culture, language, and physical appearance, find it relatively easy to
concoct a believable myth of common origin to justify a political alliance. The
Bini of Nigeria, for instance, trace a common origin with the sacred Yoruba city
of Ile Ife, at least at the dynastic level. Similarly, an immigrant strain may become
so assimilated to the language and culture of its hosts that, in time, it may lose its
identity and forget its separate origin. However, this assimilation is only likely if
the process of acculturation is accompanied by extensive interbreeding. Of
course, after several generations of interbreeding, the two groups acquire a
partially common descent. The so-called “myth” of common descent merely
recognizes a fait accompli. [van den Berghe 1983b, 227]

How, then, do we account for the quintessence of ethnicity in

postcolonial Africa and the associated central tendencies of ethnically based
oligarchy? Following van den Berghe, we assume that the calculus of genetic
relatedness is at least indirectly at the root of kinship (and kin terminology),
that cultural enabling mechanisms allow biological priorities to find expres-
sion through the nesting of kinship in cultural ethnicity, and that putative
African Coups d’Etat 127

myths of common descent will be employed if they help reinforce in-group

solidarity in ways which contribute to inclusive fitness of individual group
members. Alliances involving individuals in nucleus ethnic groups beyond
bands, tribes, and chiefdoms are continually under the direction of the
identification mechanism. It is this mechanism, described in chapter 5, which
so powerfully links continuities of precolonial Africa with African society
today. Its predicted bearing on ethnically based oligarchy and coups d’état
can be formalized in terms of 3 assumptions:

Assumption 6.1. The identification mechanism evaluates the cost—

benefit consequences of identifying with larger social groups. It assumes
critical significance when there is more than one larger group as a possible
candidate for the individual’s terminal community. Furthermore, when these
alternative group memberships are mutually exclusive, and sometimes
mutually antagonistic, the identification mechanism is under stress to identify
the most secure group for inclusive fitness maximization.
Assumption 6.2. Cultural ethnic groups, rather than multiethnic
societies, are typically the optimal group for the identification mechanism to
anchor the individual. Members of cultural ethnic groups tend to share
similar phenotypic features, language, religion, traditional territory (home-
land), and a common history. These shared characteristics are often
reinforced by notions of common descent and group creation myths.?
Combined, they speak powerfully to the identification mechanism.
Assumption 6.3. State boundaries and state building are often arbitrary
and superficial in contemporary Africa. State boundaries are a legacy of
colonialism. They often cut across ethnic and tribal homelands, splitting
cultural ethnic groups into two or more different state territories. This brings
people from many diverse ethnic backgrounds into one newly defined
political—territorial entity. Often, leadership is monopolized by members
from a particular ethnic group. These groups exercise monopolistic control
over state power, directing resources toward members of their own ethnic
group and homeland. Economic and political disparities result along cultural,
ethnic group boundaries.

It follows from Assumption 6.1 (internal conditions) and Assumption

6.3 (external conditions) that loyalty and identity of individuals in nucleus
ethnic groups will almost inevitably be directed toward their own cultural
ethnic group. The identification between one’s nucleus ethnic group and
cultural ethnic group will be strong, sometimes rendering the two indis-
tinguishable in the individual’s mind. This sets the stage for fierce competi-
tion among cultural ethnic groups within most newly independent African
128 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

states. In order to optimize the welfare of an individual’s nucleus ethnic

group, his or her cultural ethnic group needs to seek a position of dominance.
The bias toward aggression/conflict, inherent in the context of nucleus
ethnicity, is transmitted, and perhaps amplified collectively, to the level of
one’s cultural ethnic group. Given that the military is often the most modern
and efficient sector in Africa, coups d’état tend to be a frequent means of
seizing state apparatus, and mobilization for coups d’état tends to be based
on cultural ethnic group membership.

ISOLATING PRIMARY DETERMINANTS

Strip away rhetoric concerning constitutional mechanisms of state control

and transfer of power, and we predict that ethnicity per se has a relatively
direct impact on the transfer of power through military intervention and
conflict. From our theoretical perspective, cultural ethnicity will emerge as
the key player in African coups d’état once secondary influences are factored
out. It should also interact with other variables to increase or reduce the
probability of coups d’état. Evidence from multivariate statistical studies
bears these expectations out.
One of the most rigorous, systematic studies of African coups d’état has
been undertaken by Jackman (1978), a political scientist. Covering the period -
1969-1975, Jackman employs multivariate techniques to evaluate four
variables thought to have independent effects on the stability of African
regimes. These include cultural pluralism (the absence of dominant-cultural
ethnic groups), social mobilization, and two political factors — stable or
dominant political parties and mass political participation.
Key players in Jackman’s model and their hypothesized effects are
summarized in Table 6.3. These hypotheses and the empirical measures used
to represent them place solid emphasis on (1) the destabilizing effects that
“primordial attachments” have on regimes, especially those based on ethnic
ties, (2) the destabilizing effects of social mobilization or socioeconomic
change on regimes, especially if governments fail to satisfy new aspirations
and expectations of the population, and (3) the stabilizing effects of
constitutional-process variables involving a stable one- or two-party system
(versus many political factions) and large electoral turnout at times of
democratic voting.
Jackman also evaluates the interaction between destabilizing and
stabilizing influences on regimes. Do strong primordial attachments (eth-
nicity) interact with constitutional-process variables to reduce the stabilizing
TABLE 6.3
Theoretical constructs, Empirical Measures and Hypotheses in Jackman’s Study

Effects of pluralism (ethnicity)

Hypothesis I: Societies that are heterogeneous with respect to ascriptive or primordial
attachments, specifically attachments based on ethnic, linguistic and religious ties, are
more prone to coups. Such primordialist ties are important because they compete with
and often predate attachments to the civic state itself, thereby forming the basis of
political conflict.
Hypothesis I]: Heterogeneity will be particularly destabilizing as societies experience
social mobilization, since mobilization makes different elements within the population
increasingly aware of group differences.
Empirical measure: Pluralism is measured by the proportion of the population in the
largest ethnic group. These are people who share patterns of marriage, descent,
community organization, authority and economic structure. All societies studied by
Jackman had two or more ethnic groups.

Effects of social mobilization

Hypothesis III: Increased mobilization of the population into politics and the political
process should reduce the probability of coups because coups are covert events
instigated by small numbers of people. However, if mobilization is not accompanied by
an increase in a government’s capacity to satisfy new aspirations and expectations
generated by social mobilization, then mobilization could increase probabilities of
coups. In the African context, mobilization is expected to have on balance, a
destabilizing impact on the probability of coups.
Empirical measure: Mobilization is represented by a joint measure of the proportion of
the population that is not in traditional rural settings and is literate.

Effects of multipartyism and mass political participation

Hypothesis IV: Multipartyism is positively related to coups d’état. Multipartyism (or lack
of a dominant party) generally gives expression to and exacerbates preexisting social
cleavages, whereas one (or perhaps two) parties are seen as more stable.

Hypothesis V: The more participants there are in the party system (mass political
participation), the more powerful they can become as influences on destabilization and,
thus, the probabilities of coups.
Alternative hypothesis VI: Mass participation is in fact stabilizing and reduces the
probability of coups; by increasing the number of politically involved persons, it
reduces the opportunities for small factions to engage in such clandestine political
activities as coups.

Empirical measure: Multipartyism, or rather the lack of it, is represented by party

dominance or the proportion of the vote cast for the winning party in the election
closest (but prior) to the date of independence. Political participation is represented by
iE
the proportion of the population voting in national legislative elections.
130 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

effects of the latter? By testing for the presence of many influences on coups,
yet factoring out effects of primordial attachments such as ethnicity,
Jackman’s study comes close to the kind of statistical inquiry we would have
performed ourselves.
Jackman evaluates his hypothesis in three stages using multiple regres-
sion techniques. First, he examines the effects of cultural pluralism (strong
ethnic heterogeneity) and social mobilization. Results show that both
variables have a statistically significant positive effect on the occurrence of
coups d’état. Referring to Table 6.3, hypotheses I and III were confirmed,
whereas hypothesis II was indeterminant. Between the two significant
variables, ethnicity clearly emerged as the most potent destabilizing force on
African regimes.
In the second stage of Jackman’s model, effects of multipartyism and
political participation were examined. Multipartyism, or the absence of one
or two large, stable parties, is positively related to coup activity. Hypothesis
IV is thus confirmed (Table 6.3). Alternatively, political turnout tends to
reduce the probability of coups, thereby confirming hypothesis VI and
rejecting hypothesis V.
The third stage of Jackman’s test combines variables from the first and
second stage to produce a “fuller”? model. In this case, results not only agree
with those reported previously, but regression coefficients on the key
variables remained relatively stable in the fuller model. This implies that
ethnicity exerts stable, independent effects on the probability of coups d’état
whether additional explanatory variables are present in the model or not.
Furthermore, on examining interaction terms, Jackman found that ethnicity
works in conjunction with either mass political participation or mass political
participation plus multipartyism to further increase the probability of coups.
In conclusion, Jackman (1978, 1274) suggests that “both social mobili-
zation and the presence of a potentially dominant ethnic group have
destabilizing consequences, at least in the context of the new nations of black
Africa (e.g., Zimbabwe). The first of these variables is one that changes
slowly, while the second is even less responsive to conventional political
action.” These findings render false Zolber’s (1968) claim that it is impossible
to specify a category of countries where coups have occurred from others
which have so far been spared. The same applies to Decalo’s (1976)
conclusion that structural characteristics of political systems on elite
instability are trivial when compared to the “idiosyncratic element.”
African Coups d’Etat 131

PRIMARY VERSUS SECONDARY DETERMINANTS

The centrality of ethnicity in African coups raises questions about the

significance of other parameters of the social environment. Jackman’s study
controls for only three sociopolitical variables. Would the primacy of
ethnicity have diminished had Jackman controlled for economic variables as
well? Or, alternatively, might ethnicity retain its independent effects in the
presence of economic influences, perhaps interacting with them to further
increase the probability of coups d’état?
Studies examining the impact of economic influences on coups d’état and
intergroup warfare are numerous and varied. Though many neglect ethnicity
altogether, several emphasize that an unequal distribution of economic and
social resources between ethnic groups of differing size and political clout can
fan the flames of ethnic awareness (Rothchild and Olorunsola 1983a; Ifeka
1986). Connor (1984) confronts the issue directly by asking the following: Is
ethnic nationalism and interethnic conflict an economic impulse at bottom,
or does the psychology of ethnic nationalism, which includes a sense of
oneness, represent a force of sufficient independence to bring groups to the
battlefield? He reviews the literature and concludes that ethnocentrism
operates remarkably independently from the economic variable. At the same
time however, he submits that economic factors operate as catalytic agents or
exacerbators of conflict, sometimes even delineating what is to be fought
over.
The most systematic study to date which evaluates both political and
economic variables has been undertaken by T. H. Johnson and Slater (1983)
and T. H. Johnson et al. (1984, 1986). These authors replicate Jackman’s
study, but with several important differences. First, they focus only on coups
in which the state’s military, security, or police force played a role in the event
(versus Jackman’s study of military plus civilian-motivated coups). They did
so because “‘for better or worse, the study of national politics in black Africa
is rapidly being reduced to the study of military intervention and military
rule” (T. H. Johnson et al. 1984, 622). Second, they expand Jackman’s time
frame by including coups during an additional 7 years (1976-1982). Third,
they retest Jackman’s variables in the presence of several additional variables
which measure economic opportunities, growth, and change. Their rationale
for including economic influences agrees with Connor’s (1984) economic
interpretation. They propose that a stagnating economy, in conjunction with,
say, rising unemployment, recurrent balance-of-payments crises, and fla-
grant corruption, can impact on sociopolitical environments in ways that
aggravate the probability of military coups d’état.
T. H. Johnson et al. tested their model in two stages. First, they showed
that Jackman’s model, with four independent variables, performs less well in
132 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

terms of overall explanatory capacity (that is, R? level) when (1) more
countries are in the sample and (2) more coups are included given their longer
time frame (1960-1982 versus Jackman’s 1960-1975). Second, they showed
that the lost explanatory power of Jackman’s model can be made up with the
addition of economic variables. Nonetheless, they agree with Jackman on the
continued stability and statistical significance of ethnicity as a primary causal
factor regardless of the added economic variables.
Another relevant feature of the T. H. Johnson et al. study is their
emphasis not on ethnicity per se, but on ethnic homogeneity within the
military as a primary cause. This follows the theoretical tradition of Welch
and Smith (1974, 14-15): “If other factors are equal, African states whose
militaries are large and ethnically homogeneous experience more military
intervention than states with smaller, culturally plural militaries”. As Welch
(1986, 321) explains

Armed forces in tropical Africa have been ethnically unrepresentative, and

continue to be so, with very few exceptions. They do not represent their societies
in microcosm; some groups are significantly over-represented, others clearly
under-represented.

Welch and others maintain that colonial policies of staffing the military
are partially responsible for unequal ethnic representation in the armed
forces. In turn, ethnic concentration in institutions of force and power have
been used to their advantage. As Welch (1986, 329) puts it:

Given the low social prestige of the military in earlier decades, the process of
special promotion for the winners, and frequent forcible removal of the losers,
has given force to the injunction about the last being first. As a vehicle for group
upward mobility, the successful coup d’état has served some well. The cost,
however, has often been a widening gulf between the armed forces, increasingly
narrow in their ethnic foundations, and the society as a whole.

Welch concludes that ethnically inspired coups have been particularly

successful because the specific needs of coup planners, including secrecy,
speed, and effectiveness, tend to underscore ethnic considerations. A
common language, culture, and sense of brotherhood provide ready unity in
what are high-risk proceedings. Once successful conspirators have taken
control, the narrow nature of their group can no longer be concealed. Ethnic
aggrandizement or protection of privilege is a leading impetus for the act of
intervention (Welch 1986).
African Coups d’Etat 133

ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS

In the studies reviewed previously, the selection of explanatory variables has

been guided by theory and past quantitative and qualitative research. Some
qualitative studies, however, contain interpretations of coups d’état that are
too general, conceptually vague, or impossible to quantify. Nevertheless, they
have received serious attention by students of African conflict and, thus,
merit consideration here. Fortunately, the onerous task of grouping and
evaluating such alternate qualitative explanations has been undertaken by
Welch (1977). These include the now familiar warrior tradition, personal and
corporate factors within African armies, unsettled conditions in which
recourse to force is commonplace, and external intervention.
Certainly, aspects of Mazrui’s (1977a) warrior tradition are present in
many African societies where coups d’état have transpired. But to suggest
that coups or continued violence are a spin-off of the nurturing of warriors or
the glorification of martial skills is far fetched. All groups are prone to
producing warriors when military and economic survival is at issue. Our
position is that warriors may be present at times of coups d’état but they are
fighting for something far deeper and more ultimate than the preservation of
a warrior tradition or the glorification of martial skills.
How might personal and corporate factors within African armies
motivate coups d’état? This consideration implies that individual animosities
between commanding officers and heads of state may lead to violence. It also
includes political interference in matters which the military perceives as its
prerogative (for example, determining military budgets). While such consid-
erations are relevant to specific cases, they are not applicable to coups d’état
in general. Nor do they address deeper underpinnings of personal and
corporate factors. It is our position that when such conflicts involve heads of
different ethnic groups, and when ethnic interests are compromised, then
conflict likely results. Alternatively, when ethnicity is not a consideration,
personal and corporate disagreements are usually insufficient as motivators
of coups d’état. Again, ethnicity and its underpinnings are the bottom line.
Another explanation, unsettled conditions in which recourse to force is
commonplace, argues vaguely that basic structures of African society (in new
states) hold the seeds of a coup d’état within themselves. In political science,
the tradition is to equate these basic structures with unequal access to
resources, or absence of political institutions for resolving conflict (Welch
1977). True enough. What is typically missing in such explanations,
however, is the realization that inequalities and uneven development tend to
be along ethnic lines (Stone 1983). In addition, disorder in political
institutions usually stems from an unnatural marriage between ethnic—
nationalistic groups and imposed European statehood.
134 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Welch also rejects the idea that external manipulations and/or reference
symbols are responsible for coups d’état. We agree with his interpretation:

External influences on coups d’état take three forms: (1) direct involvement,
(2) indirect involvement through reference groups, and (3) contagion. The fine
hand of the CIA is often purported to lie behind military intervention south of the
Sahara — yet, as Ruth First has noted, this species of demonology does not square
with the facts. “Obsolete theories of external intervention in the Third World”
_ should be cast aside, she suggests. “It is not a matter of a few foreign plotters
springing coups d’état or assassinations on unsuspecting states. ... To make it the
whole picture, of even the main ingredient, is simplistic. .. aif Africa ... the
primary initiative for the coup d’état does not seem to have come from outside,
but from inside the countries themselves. In fact, coups d’état more likely result
from the withdrawal of external support from a regime than from direct
sponsorship of intervention. Indirect involvement, on the other hand, may be
extremely significant. Officers trained abroad may absorb attitudes that,
transplanted home, move them toward intervention.” Such “allies,” in First’s
terminology, need no further prodding to undertake political action. Finally,
successful intervention by one army might spark intervention by another, as
illustrated by the clustering of coups d’état in Central and West Africa in late
1965 and early 1966. However, by the mid-1970s the coup-making capabilities
of African armies had been conclusively demonstrated; there was no need to
show politically aspirant majors how readily intervention could be carried out.
[Welch 1977, 94]

Finally, some readers may lament the absence of competing theoretical

perspectives on the concept of the state itself, assuming such perspectives
might provide useful insights into the occurrence of coups d’état. From our
perspective, competing theories of state formation are of secondary, proxi-
mate importance. At best, they describe factors affecting the shape or form
that coups d’état take. Interpretations of state building do not explain the
phenomenon of the coup d’état or its frequency in Africa. Rather, theoretical
tools such as nucleus ethnicity and the identification mechanism must be
employed to address deep causes and central tendencies of such behavior.

CONCLUSION :

Our review of the literature confirms the persistence and strength of ethnicity
and of the strong pull, in the absence of powerful counterforces, toward
ethnicallybased oligarchy.in Africa.Increasingly, scholars ;are attributing the
primordialism of ethnicity to its roots in kinship (Connor 1984; Horowitz
African Coups d’Etat 135

1985; van den Berghe 1987). For the most part, however, political scientists
have failed to acknowledge-that-a general theory is now at hand to account
for the ubiquitousness and persistence of ethnicity. van den Berghe (1981), a
sociologist, takes credit for providing a rough blueprint for such a theory by
examining a broad range of ethnic phenomenon in terms of the presence of
nepotistic altruism with postulated links to inclusive fitness. Our theory goes
on to specify the linkages involved over evolutionary time, epigenetic
underpinnings of cognition, and the role of the identification mechanism in
explaining coups d’état.

NOTES

1. Of equal consequence, however, premises of the state within Europe itself have not
escaped realities of ethnic entrenchment. The resurgence of ethnic nationalism in several parts of
the European continent continually threatens its integrity. Moreover, evidence is accumulating
that processes of modernization, including education, urbanization, and industrialization, have
clearly not resulted in the demise of ethnicity as strong forces in politics. The resurgence of ethnic
mobilization, tribalization, and balkanization is a worldwide phenomenon (Stein and Hill 1977;
Bates 1983; Horowitz 1985; Safran 1987).
2. Together, they may be construed as “recognition markers,” which prescribe the
boundary within which the identification mechanism is functioning effectively.
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CHAPTER of

Nationalism and Patriotism

NATIONALISM : AN ANCIENT ANSWER TO A MODERN CHALLENGE

Modern nationalism exhibits a puzzling combination of irrational and rational

elements, and its very strength (in the war-spirit) reposes in the union of mental
primitiveness with all the instruments offered by the progress of science and
technique.
[Frederick Hertz 1950]

Nationalism can mean... the determination to assert national identity, national

dignity, and national freedom of action. It can also mean the xenophobic
determination to assert these things at the expense of other nations.
{Arthur Schlesinger 1981]

Nationalism is a potent factor in the development of interstate.conflict, civil

wars, separatist movements, and ethnically inspired sectarian strife (Glossup
1983). It draws strength partly from ethnocentrism, or positive attitudes
toward the in-group versus negative.attitudes.toward.out-groups.(van der
Dennan 1987). It fosters pride, dignity, and related sentiments among
members of the in-group, thereby constituting a “moral” and philosophical
basis on which to demand political sovereignty. Nationalism can therefore be
an effective tool or ideology to mobilize members of an in-group toward
independence and ‘self-government (Symmons- -Symonolewicz 1982).
Most scholars treat nationalism as an ideology of recent historical
vintage, “‘dated” to events in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.! Yet,
roots of nationalism are deep and ancient. A. D. Smith (1979, 1982) and
Armstrong (1982), for example, show that it was the historical development
of ethnic communities that eventually led to the growth of nationalism in
contemporary societies. The appearance of modern nationalism and its
association with modern nations is, therefore, the tip of the iceberg.
Nationalism rests on a vast, tradition-bound complex of culture, ethnicity,
and beliefs of the “‘folk’”’ (Mitchison 1980).
138 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

To explain why nationalism has emerged as a powerful vestige of

humanity’s propensity for warfare, we must first clarify the relationship
between nationalism, ethnicity, and the formation of nation-states. There is
much room for confusion here. Figure 7.1 shows that the ultimate goal of
nationalism is to transform a cultural ethnic group into a nation-state.
(Recall, among cultural ethnic groups, there is strong congruence of the five
recognition markers reviewed in chapter 5.) That is, genuine nationalism
arises when and only when a cultural ethnic group mobilizes to found its own
independent nation-state.
FIGURE 7.1. Stages of nationalistic mobilization. National consciousness is the subjective
awareness of common aspirations, shared visions, and memories (a state of
mind). Nationhood is the objective representation of national consciousness in
the form of permanent, observable, and culturally transferable histories,
folklore, and national literature and symbols.

Nationalism
ae Se Sy
National consciousness Nationhood
aes =a = (ae an
Cultural ae Mobilization/ ———> Nation — Sovereignty — Nation-
ethnic politicization state
group

Inuit

Basques (Spain)
— — Kurds (Turkey, Iran, Iraq)
Sikhs (India)

ee
Oe ee ee ee ONS
Eritreans

Serna ES SE Se a Ee ES Se ee Israel
Japan

A cultural ethnic group can achieve this in one of two ways: by resisting
conquest by other groups or by breaking away from imposed political
boundaries. For example, the Basques are a cultural ethnic group striving to
separate from Spain (itself a multiethnic state) and create their own nation—
state. In Figure 7.1, observe that the Kurds (in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq) and the
Sikhs (in India) are also examples of cultural ethnic groups that have
mobilized to attain national sovereignty.
When cultural ethnic groups mobilize to the extent that they become
highly politicized, they then evolve to become a nation. A highly politicized
cultural ethnic group, or nation, is one which has an agenda or constitution
and a centralized leadership structure (for example, Palestinians and
Nationalism and Patriotism 139

Eritreans). Should a cultural ethnic group succeed in attaining sovereignty, it

then becomes a nation-state (for example, Israel and Japan).
It is clear from Figure 7.1 that there are many stages of national
mobilization. Yet, at each stage, ideologies of nationalism are employed to
accomplish sovereignty. Some cultural ethnic groups, however, may never
seek this goal, thus eliminating the relevance of nationalism, national
consciousness, or nationhood from their development. The Inuit are an
example. Other cultural ethnic groups may succeed in creating a strong
national consciousness but fail to ever attain sovereignty as a nation-state.
These points of clarification are crucial because the concepts of nation,
nation-state, and multiethnic states are continually confused and misrepre-
sented in the political science literature. They also clarify why it would have
been inappropriate to use nationalism to explain coups d’état in Africa
(chapter 6). That is, cultural ethnic groups in African coups d’état seek to take
government control of multiethnic states in order to occupy a dominant
position in the given political context. They do not seek to create a new
nation-state which is the sole objective of nationalism.
Having clarified terms, we can now anticipate the significance of
nationalism as a contemporary vehicle of warfaring propensities. Most
important, it has been employed aggressively by cultural ethnic groups to
foster national independence in a balance-of-power world. In the process, in-
group amity/out-group enmity and inclusive-fitness biases for aggression/
conflict have been transferred from boundaries of the nucleus ethnic group to
those of the cultural ethnic group.
As the cultural ethnic group moves toward nationhood, these same
biases become.entrenched at the level of the nation. Thus, enemies of the
nation become readily identified, and national consciousness targets them as
objectives of discrimination. Furthermore, the legacy of nationalism has been
particularly aggressive in Europe where successful nation building was
accomplished by foreign conquest, including colonial conquest. This legacy
of aggressive nationalism has left cultural ethnic groups everywhere little
choice but to adopt the same cultural device (nationalism) in their own quest
for independence.
The first section of this chapter shows that nationalism is a powerful
device for promoting in-group cohesion and mobilization because it ““unam-
biguously speaks the language’’ of the identification mechanism (chapter 5).
We begin by providing an inclusive fitness logic of nationalism to show how
nationalism serves inclusive fitness priorities, thereby transferring individual
biases for aggression/conflict from nucleus ethnic groups to homogeneous
cultural ethnic groups to the level of the modern nation-state. Five case
140 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

studies illustrate the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism at work. These

include Japan, South Africa (Afrikaner), Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan.
In the second main section of this chapter, we undertake a similar
analysis, beginning with the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism. This is
followed by two case studies, the United States and USSR.

Inclusive Fitness Logic of Nationalism

Nationalism forges a psychological link between an individual’s inclusive

fitness priorities (ultimate utilities) and the notion of a nation. The most
powerful expression of this psychological bond is the inclusive fitness logic of
nationalism: that the nation is a suprafamily and its members are somehow
related by birth (Snyder 1968). In this way, a person’s belief of common
descent, underscored by myths of common ancestors or an original progeni-
tor, extends to the nation (van den Berghe 1981; A. D. Smith 1984a).
Some scholars maintain that to define nationalism in objective terms
only, thereby ignoring its subjective characteristics, is inevitably futile
(Rawkins 1983; Symmons-Symonolewicz 1985). This should not come as a
surprise, for it has long been recognized that the nature of nationalism is
intensely psychological (Hinsley 1973; Breuilly 1982; Tiryakian and Nevitte
1985). Indeed, the essence of the nation, as Connor (1978) observes, is a
psychological bond that joins individuals together and instills a notion that
they are somehow different from all other people.
It is through the identification mechanism that the nation becomes a
psychological extension of one’s nucleus ethnicity and, thus, the preferred
larger group for inclusive fitness maximization. The expression of national-
ism is made possible by the development of, first, a national consciousness
and, second, a sense of nationhood. Both are fostered and nourished through
operations of the identification mechanism.

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS
How does national consciousness come into being, especially when it may be
shared by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who may never
actually see one another? Communications theory, as advanced by Deutsch
(1966), provides a partial answer. Developing his theory within the
framework of modernizing nations, Deutsch argues that new methods of
information dissemination, as well as the advent of mass media, have played a
critical role in transforming and redirecting semiconscious ethnic self-
awareness. Mass communication helps create new awareness of common
aspirations and more intensive networks of shared visions and memories.
The result is often a clearly self-defined national consciousness.
Nationalism and Patriotism 141

Common aspirations and shared visions are requisites to mobilization of

nationalist groups (Brass 1976). They make possible the simultaneous
sharing, by all in-group members, of critical information about themselves
versus out-groups. Consequently, common perceptions of group boundaries
become sharper, cultural symbols acquire new and more broadly shared
meaning and significance, and a multitude of symbols and ethnic attributes
are brought into congruence with each other. (Recall the importance of
congruence in our model of the identification mechanism in chapter 5.)
Cognitive processes in the identification mechanism thus transform a
narrowly based ethnic consciousness, one based on kin groups, villages, or
local communities, into a broadly based national consciousness. Subjectively,
the nation as the in-group, where inclusive fitness priorities are best served,
becomes entrenched in the individual’s mind.
Fundamental to transforming semiconscious ethnic awareness into
national consciousness is the presence and emotional appeal of recognition
markers (chapter 5). For example, common language, the primary means of
communication, plays a critical role in group identification. Additionally,
religion often sets rules for endogamy (the basis for community) and, by
extension, serves as the basis for communication (Williams 1982a). Similarly,
common phenotypic characteristics and the perception of a common
homeland further strengthen congruence among recognition markers. Again,
mass communication transfers these narrowly perceived similarities (for
example, at the level of kin groups, villages, or local communities) to a
broadly based national consciousness. As a result, cognitive and emotive
processes in the identification mechanism extend the individual’s perception
of the in-group. Emotional ties that typically bond the individual to his or her
family and close relatives are carried over to the nation. As Anderson (1983)
argues, it is in this way that the nation ultimately “lives” in the consciousness
and imagination of its members.
NATIONHOOD
The difference between national consciousness and nationhood is that the
former is a state of mind. Nationhood, however, is an objective representa-
tion of national consciousness. As a permanent, observable, and culturally
transferable entity, nationhood is typically embodied in popular histories,
folklore, and national literature and symbols. For nationalism to reach its full
potential as a mobilization device, national consciousness must give rise to
nationhood. As A. D. Smith observes (1984b, 457), given a powerful national
consciousness:
there gradually emerges a more or less documented story of the community’s
“history” in the form of collective myths of its peculiar cultural context. The
142 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

successive layers of myth, or sets of myths, are then formulated as a constitutive

myth of the polity (the nation).

The most powerful constitutive myth in this regard is the myth of common
descent. When notions of common descent are given objective representa-
tion, as in literature or symbols, national consciousness gives way to a sense
of nationhood. Nationhood can thus symbolize the “suprafamily” in which
every member is “related”’ by birth.
As with national consciousness, the identification mechanism is integral
to the development of nationhood. Notions of common descent are credible
only to the extent that congruence and affective intensity of recognition
markers are strong and inclusive fitness priorities are perceived to be best
served by the nation: Only then does the nation become a suprafamily and all
in-group members become brothers and sisters in a meaningful sense.
Moreover, the nation becomes a terminal community, justifiably receiving
individual loyalty and devotion.
The maturing of nationhood can also be accelerated and powerfully
shaped by conflict and warfare. A two-way street is often involved whereby
congruence of recognition markers heightens perceptions of out-groups and
presence of belligerent out-groups heightens perceived commonalities among
in-groups. Many studies reveal that conflict/warfare can forcefully mold
unarticulated ethnic self-awareness into a clear distinction of “us” versus
“them” (Orridge 1981; A. D. Smith 1981a,b).

FORMALIZATION
The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism can be summarized in several
assumptions and implications.

Assumption 7.1. Nationalism’s powerful appeal lies in its inclusive

fitness logic. It renders the nation a suprafamily for its members.
Assumption 7.2. The expression of nationalism is made possible by the
identification mechanism. Technologies of mass communication enable
cognitive and emotive processes in the identification mechanism to transform
a narrowly based ethnic consciousness (one based on kin groups, villages, or
local communities) to a broadly based national consciousness. Subjectively,
the nation as the in-group, where inclusive fitness priorities are best served,
becomes entrenched in the individual’s mind. :
Assumption 7.3. A sense of nationhood takes shape as myths and beliefs
of common descent are reflected in popular histories, folklore, and national
literature. Again, these “‘speak”’ to the identification mechanism to produce
an objective and permanent representation of nationalistic sentiment and
consciousness.
Nationalism and Patriotism 143

Assumption 7.4. Conflict/warfare can also play an important role in

shaping and developing nationalism. A mutually reinforcing relationship
exists between nationalism and conflict/warfare.

Implication 7.1. Over evolutionary time, inclusive fitness biases involv-

ing conflict/warfare have been most directly associated with nucleus eth-
nicity; nationalism has effectively mobilized these same biases to operate at
the level of the nation.
Implication 7.2. Nationalism is a powerful contemporary cultural
manifestation of humanity’s propensity for warfare.

Summing up, the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism bonds individual

concerns for family and kin with those of the nation. Inclusive fitness and kin
selection dictate the family unit as the center of love and solidarity
throughout evolution. Now, because of nationalism, the nation is similarly
conceived. As Anderson (1983) observes, it is for this reason that nations can
inspire self-sacrificing “love.” But, with respect to out-groups, “nationalism
has inspired masses of people to veritable orgies of emotion and violence.
Nationalist conflicts are among the most intractable and least amenable to
reason and compromise”’ (van den Berghe 1981, 62).
Of course, nationalism can adopt different ideologies, different political
platforms, and different strategies. Ultimately, however, its powerful mobi-
lization appeal stems not from particular content but from its inclusive fitness
logic. To illustrate this point, we turn to five case studies.

Japan

OVERVIEW
Japan is our first case study because it is one of the few true nation-states
existing today. Japan exhibits a high degree of congruence of the five
recognition markers in our model. All Japanese share the same language, a
vast majority of them have common religious practices, and they are
phenotypically similar. There is no ambiguity as to where their homeland is
— the isles of Japan. And these markers are powerfully fused in the person of
the emperor, who symbolically personifies the divine origin of the Japanese
people as well as the continuity of the Japanese nation. Thus, for the average
Japanese, the nation is literally a suprafamily and the emperor, the semidivine
“father” of the nation. These characteristics allow the inclusive fitness logic
of nationalism to operate powerfully. They are manifest in extraordinary self-
sacrifice on behalf of the nation, deeply rooted ethnocentrism, and
144 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

xenophobia. In recent history, these characteristics have combined to

produce one of the most rapid and successful attempts to industrialize and
militarize a feudal society. And, these factors converged to create aggressive
nationalism and fanaticism in warfare. Bes

DISCUSSION
A prominent feature in Japan’s history is the length and extent of its
geographical isolation. This isolation has provided a basis for historical and
cultural continuity up to the nineteenth century. Though anthropologists
have identified a mixed racial or phenotypic makeup of the early inhabitants
of Japan, its geographical isolation has contributed to a prolonged process of
“racial fusion.” As a result, the Japanese are one of the most homogeneous
cultural and ethnic groups in the world.
In Japanese society today, there are only three small out-groups. They are
the Ainu, the Barakumin, and the Koreans. The Ainu are the original people
of the Japanese isles. The Barakumin, although ethnically and phenotypically
indistinguishable from the average Japanese, have been singled out because
their ancestors performed tasks considered unclean. They can be identified by
the location of their ancestral villages and their genealogical background. The
Koreans are mostly descendants of forced laborers brought to Japan only a
few generations ago. These three minorities face severe discrimination and
represent a small number of people. Further, they have no tangible effects on
Japanese perceptions of the nation as a homogeneous suprafamily.
Japan’s ethnic and cultural traditions, characterized by an extraordinary
degree of ethnocentrism, have served as fertile ground for the development of
nationalism since Commodore Perry opened Japan to the outside world in the
nineteenth century. After the gunboats of Westerners displayed their naval
power and established Japan’s military inferiority in mid-nineteenth century,
the country’s traditional antiforeign sentiments were consolidated into a new
national consciousness expressed in the popular slogan “revere the emperor,
expel the barbarians!”” When confronted with the encroachment of West-
erners in the 1800s, the Meiji restoration was launched to develop greater
national strength for the protection and preservation of Japan’s culture and
traditions (Kosaka 1959).
In time, the restoration was dominated by a military theme, amounting
to a thorough militarization of the entire society. Indeed, during the period
between the Meiji restoration and World War II, over half of Japan’s national
expenditures were spent on the manpower, machinery, and technology of
warfare (Brown 1955). This imposed a tremendously heavy burden on the
people. Yet, for over 80 years the Japanese sacrificed, without complaint, for
their national welfare. They contributed voluntarily to transform their
Nationalism and Patriotism
145

ancient identity into an aggressive and expansionist nationalism (Orridge

1981).
The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism figures prominently in the
growth of Japanese nationalism. In the evolution of Japan’s national
consciousness, two particular cultural traditions have embodied this logic.
First, the family structure is organized by the Confucian principle of filial
duty and obligation. A dominant responsibility for Japanese parents is to
produce children, not only for emotional satisfaction but also to fulfill their
duty to carry on the family line. Failure to do so constitutes a major
shortcoming in life (Benedict 1946). Thus, familial and national duty
coincide.
Second, as Benedict notes in her seminal study, Japan is a nation
dominated by hierarchial orders from top to bottom. “When [the Japanese]
put their trust in ‘proper station,’ they were turning to the rule of life which
had been ingrained in them by their own social experience. Inequality has
been for centuries the rule.... Behavior that recognizes hierarchy is as natural
to them as breathing” (1946, 47). This extensive and traditional hierarchial
structure makes mass mobilization a relatively easy task. Thus, when severe
hardship was imposed on the Japanese as a consequence of their Meiji
reform, they accepted and supported it as worthy self-sacrifice for the nation.
Asa consequence of these cultural traditions, there is a strong tendency
for the average Japanese person to identify his or her welfare at the familial
and communal level with that of the nation. This tendency has been
particularly pronouncedin rural areas. A typical villager has been observed to
be a person who unquestioningly supports military and national goals
because to do so is virtuous and “good” from the viewpoint of his or her kin
group and community (Smethurst 1974). Even at the bitter end of the Second
World War, the loyalty of rural Japan to the military never wavered (Jones
1957).
With respect to a sense of nationhood, the role of the emperor has been
crucial. Japan’s present emperor, Hirohito, can be traced genealogically
through 69 generations to the first emperor, Jimmu. Thus, Japan is the only
country whose monarchy has been monopolized by a single dynasty
throughout recorded history. The institution of the emperor was, until
Japan’s defeat at the end of the World War II, the center of a cult that
permeated every aspect of the society. Early myths regarding the divine origin
of the emperor and the Japanese people were expanded and rationalized until
the citizens of Japan came to believe in the emperor as a mortal god and
themselves as his children. Thus, by long tradition, public affairs in Japan
have always been a family matter with the emperor at the head of this
national family (Brown 1955; Bergamini 1972). The institution of the
146 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

emperor thus embodies Japan’s nationhood (Breuilly 1982), and utilization

of this institution to promote official—nationalist purposes is a matter of
course (Anderson 1983).
SUMMING UP
Japan’s cultural, ethnic, and historic characteristics have-allowed- cognitive
and emotive processes in the identification mechanism to channel nationalis-
tic sentiments in a particularly aggressive way. The extraordinary power of
Japanese nationalism has been expressed by the willingness of the average
Japanese to embrace societal militarization, an aggressive expansionist
doctrine, and fanaticism in war (Tsurumi 1986). Self-sacrifice in war — such
as kamakazi behavior — is a particularly powerful testimony to aggressive
nationalism. Such actions are cultural manifestations of an inclusive fitness
logic of nationalism. Moreover, scholars have observed that remnants of
Japan’s prewar nationalism have survived the devastating humiliation and
defeat of the World War II and are on the rise again today (Taylor 1983).

South Africa
OVERVIEW
Like Japan, Afrikaner nationalism is founded on_a strong congruence of
recognition markers. Phenotypically, Afrikaners are alike (Caucasian). . They
share a common language which has, over generations, evolved iinto a unique
variant of the - Dutch language. Calvinism has provided a strong religious
focus and self-identity, especially in the early days of emigration. And, from
their ““Great Trek” in the nineteenth century, Afrikaners evolved a strong
creation “myth” and have long perceived southern Africa as their homeland.
Significant aspects of Afrikaner history have, therefore, converged to satisfy
the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism.
The strength of Afrikaner nationalism is an outgrowth of a convergence
of factors that speak strongly to the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism.
These include congruence of recognition markers as well as conflict and
warfare against both the British and black Africans. The formulation of
Apartheid represents an attempt to entrench and protect Afrikaner nation-
hood and its dominance. Even as apartheid becomes increasingly irrational
economically and politically untenable, Afrikaner nationalism remains a
major obstacle to its elimination. Aggressive and intransigent, this national-
ism sustains a stubborn ethnocentrism in the face of mounting international
and domestic criticism.
DISCUSSION
Afrikaners are descendants of Dutch settlers who arrived and settled at the
Cape of Africa during the mid-seventeenth century. This settlement led to the
Nationalism and Patriotism
147

growth of a small slave colony around Capetown. At least four major factors
contributed to the formation of a distinct Afrikaner national consciousness.
First, the early Dutch settlers shared a common culture and vision. They
spoke the same language and held the same beliefs in a Calvinist religious
doctrine. Further, in their frontier existence, they shared a vision that they
were “chosen people” with a civilizing mission in a “‘sea of primitive heathen
natives” (de Klerk 1975; Hexham 1981).
Second, at a very early stage, the Afrikaners severed their link with
Europe. This has been described as a gradual psychological disengagement
and is reflected in the term Afrikaner, which simply means African in Dutch.
The process of becoming “‘Africanized”’ contributed significantly to the self-
awareness of Afrikaners as a unique, separate group in a land surrounded by
culturally and phenotypically different people (Elphick and Giliomee 1978;
Adam and Giliomee 1979; Welsh and van der Merve 1980).
Third, the experience of the Great Trek served as a substitute for the lack
of a creation myth typically found among ethnically homogeneous groups.
The Great Trek (1834-1854) was prompted by the Afrikaners’ refusal to
accept the emancipation of slaves by the British; they perceived the
equalization of former slaves and Christians as an affront to their religious
beliefs. They migrated, with a great deal of hardship, to the interior of
Southern Africa to escape British dominance and preserve their own way of
life. This led to the opening of new frontiers and violent conflict with native
Africans (Adam and Giliomee 1979). The trek became a symbol that bound
subsequent generations of Afrikaners to a notion of common descent — an
Afrikaner was one whose ancestors survived the struggle.
Finally, the Boer War served as the crucible of blood that helped
transform Afrikaner ethnic consciousness into Afrikaner nationalism. Con-
flicts between the settlers and other groups continued even after the
Afrikaners won exclusive political power in 1948. Such conflicts pitted
Afrikaner nationalism against other forms of African nationalism (Mazrui
and Tidy 1984).
It was the convergence of these four factors which produced the powerful
Afrikaner national consciousness that subsequently launched nationhood
from a solid foundation. Beliefs and myths of Afrikaner nationhood now find
their voices in the Afrikaner language, permeate the imagination of the Volk,
and are dominant themes in popular histories, poetics, and theology
(Thompson 1985).
In the past half-century or so, there has been a shift in Afrikaner self-
representation. Since political power was gained after World War II,
“vesterday’s” oppressed group, struggling against British domination, has
been replaced by a dominant Afrikanerdom. Apartheid represents, among
148 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

other things, an attempt to institutionalize Afrikaner nationhood in the

political arena. From the Afrikaner perspective, the necessity of Apartheid
stems from the threat of rising black-African nationalism. Afrikaners have
equated their inclusive fitness maximization with their success and survival as
a dominant group. To safeguard their position as a dominant minority (3
million Afrikaners ist a population of about 28 million) and to forestall
challenges posed by black-African nationalism, Apartheid has evolved to
maintain dominance of Afrikaner nationhood in South Africa. To this end,
substantial resources have been devoted to build up and maintain South
Africa’s military which is, undoubtedly, the best in the whole of sub-Saharan
Africa. Afrikaner leaders have not hesitated to launch cross-border raids into
neighboring countries or to send troops into Namibia and Angola.

SUMMING UP
There is a vicious irony in Afrikaner nationalism and Apartheid. Apartheid
locks Afrikaner nationalism into a competitive relationship with. black-
African nationalism by equating nationalist mobilization with institu-
tionalized racism. Thus, any retreat from Apartheid symbolically signals an
assault on Afrikaner nationhood. Yet, cleavages have developed, albeit very
slowly, as antiapartheid struggles of South African nonwhites intensify. New
factors are gradually creeping in to affect assessments by the average
Afrikaner of how inclusive fitness priorities might best be served in today’s
circumstances. Are these priorities necessarily tied to the survival and
overlordship of Afrikaners as a group in South Africa? As yet, clear answers
are not available. In the interim, most Afrikaners continue to embrace
nationalism, devote considerable resources to preparing for warfare, and
wait (Crapanzano 1985).

Israel

OVERVIEW
Israel exhibits a unique configuration of three recognition markers. Israeli
identity is rooted in a common Jewish heritage, religious tradition, and belief
of common descent. These have survived thousands of years, strengthened
through the diaspora and persistent persecution. Prior to the founding of the
state of Israel, Judaism functioned not merely as a religion, but nurtured
beliefs that Jews were the chosen people. In addition, Judaism has perpetu-
ated the claim that Palestine is the true biblical homeland. Celebrations of the
Jewish Passover everywhere have always ended in the words “next year in
Jerusalem.” These three recognition markers alone — religion, homeland,
Nationalism and Patriotism
149

and belief of common descent — have produced a cohesive, vigilant

Israeli
nationalism.
With the founding of the state of Israel, however, immigration from
Europe and North Africa has contributed to ethnic and cultural diversit
y. A
major cleavage now exists between European Jews (the Ashkenazim)
and
Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (the Sephardim). They
differ in
language, phenotype, and associated cultural characteristics. According to
our model (chapter 5) these differences would seriously weaken Israeli
nationalism except for the presence of two additional considerations:
language manipulation and external threats. As we will show, these two
factors have greatly enhanced the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism even
though recognition markers are not completely congruent. In the process,
Israeli nationalism has emerged as an extremely potent force for warfare
mobilization. It is intolerant of belligerents and retaliates quickly when
threatened or attacked.

DISCUSSION
Jewish immigration to Palestine accelerated rapidly after World War II when
Jewish survivors of Nazism and the Holocaust sought Palestine as a place of
refuge. The presence of increasing numbers of Jews in Palestine was viewed
with alarm by Arabs. The state of Israel was founded in 1948 after the British
High Commission left Palestine, along with more than 10,000 British troops,
on May 14, 1948. At the same time, the new Jewish state of Israel was
proclaimed at Tel Aviv.. Armies of the surrounding Arab states, under the
unified command of the Arab League, immediately launched attacks across
the frontier. Israel surrendered the old city of Jerusalem but held on to the
new city. Intense fighting continued until January, 1949, when an armistice
was established. By this time, Israel had gained a foothold in all areas except
Jerusalem and had increased its territory by more than 50 percent since
fighting began.
Immigration of Jews from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa has
been the major source of population growth in Israel. Today, the Jewish
population of Israel is therefore culturally and ethnically heterogeneous. By
1975, less than 50 percent of Israel’s Jewish population had been born in
Israel. The rest were immigrants from other regions and countries. The
majority of the Sephardic Jews did not arrive until after the state of Israel was
established (Peleg and Peleg 1977; Snyder 1982). Despite the diversity of
cultural, linguistic, and historical backgrounds, however, the Israelis share a
strong common Jewish identity. The “fusion” of Judaism, combining a belief
of common descent and powerful emotional ties to a historical/biblical
homeland, contributed to national consciousness well before the founding of
150 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

the state of Israel (Ben-Rafael 1982). Through the centuries, Christian- and
Muslim-led discrimination, persecution, and pograms have strengthened
rather than weakened the Jewish sense of nationalism. In the nineteenth
century, the development of Zionism and its goal of establishing Israel as a
Jewish state were natural concomitants (Avineri 1981).
As a Jewish—Zionist state, Israel is considered to be the homeland for
Jews everywhere, not only its citizens. Because Judaism is the very basis of the
Israeli community, being an Israeli is equivalent to being Jewish. The state of
Israel, therefore, exists to serve and protect Jews, and to that extent, Israeli
citizenship is exclusively Jewish (Smooha 1980; Seliktar 1984; Smooha
1987). In this way, strong Jewish national consciousness evolved successfully
to nationhood.
The potency of Israeli nationalism has been further enhanced by three
factors: the impact of the Holocaust, continual conflict with neighboring
Arab states and Palestinians; and the emergence of a “‘civil religion” in Israel.
First, the Holocaust lives on as a powerful reminder not only of past
persecution and genocide but, more importantly, of the role of the Israeli state
in the protection of Jews. A lasting message of the Holocaust for Jews is to
rely solely on their own strength rather than on assistance from others
(Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983). The Jewish people, therefore, perceive the
state of Israel as their most reliable vehicle for protection and maximization
of inclusive fitness.
Perpetual conflicts with Arab states and Palestinians have further molded
Israel into a “nation in arms” (Horowitz 1987). From 1948 to 1982 there
have been five major Arab-Israeli wars. Israel maintains an exceptionally
high degree of manpower mobilization for national security. As General
Yadin, an architect of the Israeli defense forces, states: “The civilian is a
soldier on eleven months annual leave” (Horowitz 1987, 281). The average
Israeli is intimately involved with the defense of his or her country. Moreover,
it is well known that Israel’s soldiers, with their strong commitment to Israeli
nationalism, are highly motivated fighters with high morale (Gal 1986).
The emergence of a civil religion consolidates the integration of Israel. A
civil religion consists of ‘““ceremonials, myths, and creeds which legitimate the
social order, unite the population, and mobilize the society’s members in
pursuit of its dominant political goals” (Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983, ix).
Israel’s civil religion is a product of the merging of secular Zionism with
traditional Judaism. A significant aspect of this civil religion is that the
collective entity, Israel, and its right to exist are now objects of one’s faith
(Liebman and Don-Yehiya 1983). The state of Israel is therefore a com-
munity that can demand sacrifices with moral justification from its members.
Nationalism and Patriotism 151

To homogenize the Israeli community linguistically, the government of

Israel has sought to legitimate Hebrew as the national language. It has been
remarkably successful. Further, intermarriage rates between the Ashkenazi
and Sephardic Jews have risen (Gitelman 1980). And there is evidence
pointing to a more homogeneous generation of young Israelis, irrespective of
their parents’ ethnic origins (Weil 1985).

SUMMING UP
The strength of Israeli internal cohesion has been maintained by concomitant
development of intense-out-group enmity directed at Arabs inside Israel,
including those born after the founding of Israel, The situation is far worse for
Arabs living in occupied territories such as the Palestinians outside the
boundaries of Israel. They tend to be perceived. as—aliens. potentially
dangerous to the state (Shafir 1984). A more ominous manifestation of out-
group enmity is the growth of an Israeli fascist movement that aims to evict all
Arabs from the whole of Palestine (Kahane 1980). Such developments
suggest that Israeli nationalism will remain militaristic and conflict oriented.

Iran

OVERVIEW
Our fourth case study, Iran, illustrates a particularly violent, xenophobic
variant of nationalism. Iranian nationalism derives strength from the Persian
majority and its strong congruence of the five recognition markers reviewed
in chapter 5. These include common phenotype, common language (Farsi),
common religion (Shia), common homeland, and belief of common descent.
This congruence is dominated, however, by the influence of one recognition
marker — Shia Islam. Due to specific features of the Shia doctrine, the
affective intensity which binds the recognition markers is explosively
charged. Anthropomorphization of the “new Iran” in the person of
Khomeini provides yet another focal point for the average Iranian to identify
his or her personal welfare. These conditions, as well as ever-increasing
perceptions of threats from out-groups, satisfy the inclusive fitness logic of
nationalism, but with a particular xenophobic twist.

DISCUSSION
Iranian national consciousness is rooted in the history and racial conscious-
ness of the Persian empire dating back to 550 B.c. Indeed, despite its pan-
Islamic rhetoric, Iranian nationalism is actually Persian nationalism with a
fanatical Islamic focus. As Cottam (1982) observes, followers of the
£52: GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

revolution are mainly Persian, of the Shia Moslem religion, and Farsi
speaking. Persians are the majority cultural ethnic group in Iran, Minority
groups include the Turkomens, Buluchis, Kurds, Arabs, and Azerbarjanis
(Snyder 1982).
Modern Iran came into existence as an independent state in 1921 when
Reza Khan, an army officer, led a military coup, set up a dictatorship, and
established a new Pahlavi dynasty. In 1941, Reza Khan abdicated in favor of
his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. After World War II, the regime was
buffeted by a series of demonstrations and strikes, prompted by the
exploitation of Iran’s raw materials and resources by foreign powers. In the
early 1950s, Iran’s Prime Minister Massadagh, one of the early nationalists,
nationalized oil ownership. At that time, the Shah and his queen fled the
country fearing for their lives.
In August 1953, Massadagh’s government was overthrown by a CIA-
backed military coup, allowing the Shah and his family to return to the
throne. The Shah then launched extensive modernization programs using the
income from oil exports to westernize the country. Ruling as a dictator and
relying mainly on his secret police, he built one of the most powerful armed
forces in the region (Snyder 1982).
Despite his police and army, the Shah was overthrown in 1979 following
mass protests and uprisings. Leading the opposition was Ayatollah Kho-
meini, who had been jailed and exiled for more than two decades for
opposing the Shah’s attempts at westernization. Khomeini’s triumphant
return ushered in the new era of Iran as an Islamic state.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and under the charismatic
leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian nationalism has embraced Shia
Islam to reassert Iran’s identity, independence, and international status (Sick
1987). In the process, extreme antiforeign sentiments have produced
unrelenting attacks on the two great Satans (Arjomand 1986). Satan number
one, the United States represents decadent Western imperialism. Satan
number two, the USSR, represents godless Eastern atheism.
Neighboring rival powers, such as Israel, Iraq, and, more recently, the
Saudis, are also viewed as agents of one or both Satans. Following Iraq’s
invasion of Iran, Iranian nationalism has been galvanized by the threat of an
immediate external enemy. It has pursued war with almost euphoric
determination, punctuated by frequent outbursts of fanaticism. Only after
eight years of devastation, a million and a half casualties, and fully exhausted
resources, has Iran agreed to a U.N. Security Council resolution for a
ceasefire.
Motivation for the 1979 Islamic Revolution stemmed from the large
numbers of Iranians who looked to Islam to solve their country’s problems.
Nationalism and Patriotism
153

The dictatorial rule of the Shah, his Western ties, and his ambitious attempts
to modernize Iran alienated the clergy and weakened traditional bases of
social support without acquiring new ones. Many of the modernization
programs exacerbated inequalities in the distribution of income and created a
growing urban poor (Momauezi 1986). Thus, it became increasingly difficult
for the individual to identify inclusive fitness priorities with the Shah’s
Western-oriented modernization programs. Islam provided a particularly
captivating alternative. It identified all of Iran’s social ills and problems as
externally generated — as the work of corrupting foreign and non-Islamic
influences.
Islam offers internal purification. Khomeini’s Islamic state has promised
nothing less than a rediscovery of the original Iranian identity, of returning
[ran to greatness in its “untainted” form (Najmabadi 1987). National
redemption is presented as a divine plan that will allow Iran to eventually
defeat the superpowers (Cottam 1985). To this end, the Islamic state has
succeeded in mobilizing Persian Iranians, along with Iranians of a few ethnic
minorities, to fervently seek moral purification and national redemption.
This has resulted in an aggressive, antiforeign national attitude (Bayat 1985).
In day-to-day affairs, this has been visible in the uprooting of all Western
influences in Iran, including mass executions of former officials under the
Shah, members of non-Islamic groups, and those resisting Khomeini’s
policies. Prostitutes, drug addicts, smugglers, and those accused of adultery
have also been summarily executed (Bakhash 1984). These are grim
consequences of the “cleansing” of Iranian society.
Moral underpinnings of Iranian nationalism have gained additional
clout from the Shia doctrine.2 Two central Shia beliefs are particularly
relevant. First, the Shia doctrine endorses the establishment of a theocracy.
Thus, Khomeini’s supreme authority is an integral part of Iran’s destiny and is
“willed by God.” Second, the Shia tradition of martyrdom provides an
extraordinary motivation for self-sacrifice in defending Khomeini and Iran,
particularly in conflict with Iraq (Bayat 1985; Tagavi 1985; Taheri 1985). It
enlists God to encourage, approve, and legitimize sacrificial behavior on
behalf of Iran. Witness, for example, the “Fountain of Martyrs,” erected in
central Tehran, with its jets of blood (dyed water) as a tribute to the sacrifices
of Iran’s martyrs. Martyrdom serves as a potent cultural enabling device
which reinforces inclusive fitness biases for aggression in a nation of highly
congruent recognition markers.

SUMMING UP ;
Evidence shows that nationalistic goals.inIran-clearly supercede pan-Islamic
revolutionary goals(Sick-1987)..But.aquestion arises; Why did the Shah fail
154 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

to mobilize Iranians whereas Khomeini succeeded? The answer is that Iranian

nationalism failed to mature under the dictatorial rule of the Shah. Despite
attempts to model himself after.the-great Persian-king-Cyrus_(500.B.c.), the
Shah’s close connections with. Western..powers-and. his..Western-oriented
modernization programs severely. damaged his.standing.as.a nationalist. He
came to be associated with foreign influences, thus disqualifying himself as a
genuine nationalistic leader. His collapse involved many factors, including
the public’s perception of him as an American and British agent. But in the
final analysis, it was his inability to inspire Iranians to sacrifice for the good of
the nation that led to his downfall (Cottam 1982).
In contrast, Khomeini’s brand of Islam has convinced the people of Iran
to rediscover a “genuine” Iranian national identity. It also provides a genuine
religious and moralistic platform to challenge the superpowers as well as
neighboring rivals. In the process, Iranian nationalism has blossomed, but
with a twist. It has become particularly aggressive and xenophobic. Internal
cohesion is maintained at a high pitch, largely by developing paranoia toward
all things foreign. This, in turn, has been legitimized by the brutal war with
Iraq.
Because Iraqi threats to Iran are both physical and spiritual, little room is
open for compromise or negotiation. The more evil and dangerous such
threats are perceived to be, the more intractable Iranian nationalism becomes
and the more Iranians find sacrifice for the nation emotionally fulfilling.
Traditions of martyrdom further fuel and legitimize self-sacrificial behaviors.
Thus, after a tour of the horrifying carnage at the Iranian front, a foreign
correspondent reported that Iranian volunteer troops appeared “happy”
(Murray 1987).

Afghanistan

OVERVIEW
Afghanistan, our fifth case study, has been chosen to illustrate how external
threats can forge internal cohesion among groups that would otherwise be at
odds with one another. Put differently, without a powerful external foe
nationalism at the level of the state would likely disintegrate in Afghanistan.
It would be replaced by nationalism at the level of belligerent cultural ethnic
groups within the state.
Strictly speaking, Afghanistan exhibits little congruence of the five
recognition markers reviewed in chapter 5. The only common ground is
Islam, which allows the guerrillas to identify their Soviet enemies and the
Afghan puppet government as infidels, the hated out-group. But even here,
Nationalism and Patriotism
155

schisms occur between a Shia minority and the Sunni majority. Thus, the
guerrillas are fighting not for common ideals of national consciousness or
nationhood but for their respective nucleus ethnic groups, their own ancestral
village or valley. Individuals form alliances, when it is convenient or
necessary to do so, along lines where they share similar ethnic and cultural
characteristics, including beliefs of common descent.
Only infrequently, and with a great deal of mistrust, have Afghan
guerrillas formed coalitions encompassing different cultural ethnic groups.
But with increasing Soviet military pressure, multicultural ethnic group
coalitions have become more common and stable. Afghanistan currently
exemplifies group expansion in a balance-of-power context. Genuine
nationalism — as we have defined it — is not possible in this kind of situation,
however, even in the presence of a threatening out-group. Rather, the term
tribal nationalism may best describe the cohesion that results in these
circumstances (Valenta 1985).

DISCUSSION
Afghanistan consists of no fewer than nine major cultural ethnic groups. The
Pushtuns are the largest cultural ethnic group, accounting for more than one-
half of the population. More than 20 main languages are spoken, Pushtos and
Persian being the majority languages. Phenotypically, there are several major
racial types, including Indo-European and Mongoloid characteristics. Over
90 percent of the population is rural, of which a substantial proportion is
nomadic.
Ethnic and cultural diversity in the region of Afghanistan results from
centuries of migration, invasion, and domination by several different
empires. The political entity “Afghanistan” did not come into existence until
the last century and, at that, was molded by competition between the British
and Russian empires. Throughout its history, Afghanistan has always been
ruled nominally by one kind of tribal confederation or another, always with
the Pushtuns as the dominating group. Moreover, Afghans outside the capital
city of Kabul have always led a political life of strong tribal autonomy with
only a very vague sense of Afghan identity. Historically, external threats have
been the only unifying force among the Pushtun tribes, and then only
temporarily. The only common recognition marker can be traced back to the
eighth century when the people of the entire region were “Islamicized”’
(Griffiths 1981; Hyman 1984a; Keegan 1985).
The current Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was a reaction to the failed
communist revolution that took place in 1978. In that year, a group of
communist-inspired army officers toppled the government in Kabul with ease
and ushered in a Marxist regime. The new regime immediately launched a
156 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

series of reform programs aimed at eradicating many facets of Afghan culture

and economic structure, particularly in the countryside. Spontaneous armed
resistance mounted during the winter of 1978-1979, climaxing in the Herat
uprising (Herat is a major town in western Afghanistan). A popular rebellion
against the Marxist government in Kabul resulted in a massacre of more than
200 Russians, mainly Soviet military advisors. Following this, the Marxist
regime in Kabul began to lose control over most of the countryside (Bradsher
1985).
In September 1979, a new strongman in the Marxist regime, Amin,
murdered his predecessor, Taraki, to take power. Amin was considered
unreliable by the Soviets. At the same time, armed resistance to the Kabul
regime became more widespread. Thus, in December, 1979, with a powerful
armored thrust from the north and airborne units landing in Kabul, the
Soviets captured the capital. They disposed of Amin and installed Karmal as
the new leader of the Marxist regime.
If the Soviets had planned a quick pacification of the country, they
miscalculated. Armed resistance mushroomed into countrywide uprisings,
and within months Afghan troops under the Soviet puppet regime diminished
from 90,000 to less than 30,000 men, mainly by desertion to the guerrillas.
Soviet troops had to take on more and more of the fighting. By 1987, more
than 120,000 Soviet troops were in Afghanistan, carrying out frontline
combat duties alongside demoralized Afghan troops under the puppet regime
in Kabul. Countering the Russians were about 200,000 Afghan guerrillas,
armed mostly with World War I rifles. Though organized into several major
coalitions, the guerrillas operate in small units and are predominantly tribally
based.
Guerrillas follow their leaders on the basis of traditional loyalties to
family, tribe, and village (Chaliand 1982). The social basis of support is,
therefore, the extended kin group, which is sometimes linked with other
similar groups to form a neighborhood or sectarian community (Newell and
Newell 1981). Its tribal basis suffuses the guerrillas with high morale,
resilience, and an unshakable faith in ultimate victory. They have continued
the fight despite great technological inferiority, hardship, and suffering
(Martin 1984; Bradsher 1985).
Fighting, highlighted by massive Soviet attacks on rebel strongholds, has
continued unabated. On the one hand, the Soviet high command has learned
to cope with guerilla tactics and the difficult terrain. The guerrillas, on the
other hand, have become more seasoned, more coordinated, and better
equipped. An ominous development over the past few years has been for
Soviets to attack civilian populations as a means of depriving the guerrillas of
support. A tremendous amount of suffering has resulted from this “scorched
Nationalism and Patriotism
157

earth” policy. Several million Afghans have been forced to flee their
homeland and become refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Nevertheless, the
morale and determination of the guerrillas remains defiantly strong (Magnus
1985; Naby 1985).

SUMMING UP
The determination of Afghan guerrillas is rooted in the tribal nature of their
military organizations. For the guerrillas, there is no ambiguity about who
they.are fighting for. Their war is a desperate attempt to protect their families,
close relatives, homeland, and. traditions from the onslaught of an alien
power. This has prompted some observers to predict that a genuine Afghan
nationalism may emerge asa result of the war (Newell and Newell 1981;
Naby 1985). In addition, Islam, the common religious identity for all
Afghans, has served to distinguish enemies as atheistic communists. Thus, the
guerrillas call themselves the Mujahadin (Islamic warriors), engaging in a
jihad (holy war) to expel the infidels.In this sense, the jihad serves as an
effective substitute for the absence of a clear political program of war aims
(Lemercier-Quelquejay and Bennigsen 1984).
Yet, even were a genuine sense of common Afghan identity to emerge
from the current struggle, our model predicts that the end product would not
be nationalism. Not only is there a serious lack of congruence of the five
recognition markers but notions of common descent cannot be entertained.
In the future, in a free and independent Afghanistan, mobilization of citizens
would likely have to be achieved through patriotism, underscored perhaps by
a strong sense of Islamic unity. In the current situation therefore, Afghan
nationalism is really tribal nationalism. It has been made possible by external
threats. These have pressured the identification mechanism to redirect
inclusive fitness biases involving aggression/conflict from tribal infighting
toward a common enemy.

PATRIOTISM: OLD BOTTLE, NEW WINE

We must face this struggle, not as men of party, not as men of race or color or
religion, not as members of classes or economic groups, but as Americans — free
Americans — determined to do whatever is necessary that freedom may be strong
enough to win. [Vital Speeches of the Day 1940]

In common parlance, patriotism is used interchangeably with national-

ism to denote love for one’s country and the willingness to sacrifice in
158 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

warfare. Patriotism should be sharply distinguished from nationalism,

however. It is an ideology that promotes loyalty toa society that is
territorially and politically defined regardless of the cultural and ethnic
background of its members. This distinction is crucial because the primary
ingredients of nationalism, such as myths or beliefs of common descent, are
not available in multiethnic societies.
In a multiethnic state, congruence of the five recognition markers
discussed in chapter 5 is not possible. As a result, the impact of language,
religion, and phenotypic characteristics on group cohesion is necessarily
diluted. It becomes difficult, therefore, to foster a sense of national
consciousness and nationhood based on beliefs of common descent. If some
recognition markers.are absent, if congruence of the remaining recognition
markers is diluted, then what constitutes the basis of identity and com-
monality among members of multiethnic states? How do individuals relate
their inclusive fitness priorities to membership in the larger group? Can the
identification mechanism function in such a context? And if it cannot, what
happens to group allegiances and humanity’s propensity for warfare?
The answer is that patriotism strives to make multiethnic societies
sufficiently cohesive for individual loyalty and sacrifice during warfare.
Patriotism has evolved as a cultural device or innovation to do what
nationalism cannot do in multiethnic contexts. It tries to motivate individuals
to relate their inclusive fitness priorities to membership in a larger group
regardless of their cultural and ethnic background. Indeed, it is used and
refined by leaders of multiethnic states to precisely this end (G. R. Johnson
1986a, 1987).
In an environment shaped by balance-of-power considerations (chapter
3), patriotism has evolved to speak the language of the identification
mechanism. (Recall, the identification mechanism is constantly on the
lookout to serve inclusive fitness priorities when membership in a larger
group is in question.) When patriotism succeeds as a mobilization device in
warfare, it means that the identification mechanism perceives advantages to
transferring loyalties from one’s nucleus ethnic group to the level of the
multiethnic state. Put differently, transferring loyalty from one’s nucleus
ethnic group to a subgroup within the multiethnic state is interpreted as a less
viable means of maximizing inclusive fitness.
Patriotic mobilization, however, is frequently not successful. This has
been illustrated by the phenomenon of coups d’état in Africa (chapter 6).
When this happens, the identification mechanism fails to identify the
multiethnic group as the object of preferred group membership. Societal
cohesion is weakened, self-sacrifice at times of warfare is less prevalent if not
withdrawn, and intrasocietal conflict/warfare can result.
Nationalism and Patriotism 159

The balance of this chapter sketches out conditions under which

patriotism is likely to be weak or relatively strong as a mobilization device.
We begin by developing the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism — that is, how
the identification mechanism functions in the context of multiethnic states.
To do so, we differentiate two types of multiethnic states. One has evolved
through processes of immigration, the other has resulted from conquest. This
distinction shows how different handicaps affect the operation of the
identification mechanism. To illustrate the power of patriotism as a
mobilization device for warfare, we present two case studies: the United
States and the USSR.

Inclusive Fitness Logic of Patriotism

The international system today revolves around the territorial state (hence-
forth, simply the state). Most states are multiethnic, with only a few being
genuine nation-states. If patriotism is to be successful as a mobilization
device, individual members of a multiethnic state must identify their inclusive
fitness priorities with the security and welfare of the state. The state must
suffice even without the motivation afforded by shared culture and ethnicity.
In other words, an inclusive fitness logic of patriotism must be present and
must appeal to state members. This happens through the identification
mechanism.
There are two factors that can assist the appeal of patriotism in
multiethnic states (given a modicum of political stability). The first is that a
territorial bond can sometimes be cultivated in the absence of a national
bond. Recall, in the case of nationalism, that a territorial bond is one of the
five recognition markers — the homeland. With patriotism, however, the
territorial bond must stand alone without traditional homeland underpin-
nings. It may be weak, thereby reducing allegiance to the multiethnic state.
Or, individuals may be indoctrinated to be loyal to the state, as a political
territory, by force of habit, duty, and tradition. When programs are
successfully undertaken to achieve this goal, as they often are in contempo-
rary states, political boundaries of multiethnic states can serve as rallying
points of in-group amity/out-group enmity (Duchacek 1986).
Second, all multiethnic states attempt to acculturate, overtly or covertly,
their ethnic minorities to the traditions of the ruling majority. Acculturation
may take several generations, often standing a better chance of success in
immigrant societies (Archdeacon 1983). To the extent that acculturation is
successful, operations of the identification mechanism are enhanced. To
illustrate, when ethnic minorities acquire the language of the majority group,
160 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

y
they also acquire, at least partially, the cultural traditions of the majorit
group. This includes access to the majority group’s religion. If, over a period
of several generations, minorities lose their own language, chances are they
such
will also lose touch with many of their own cultural traditions. Under
conditions, another recognition marker — common languag e — would
become prevalent. Accordingly, the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism
would have more ground on which to prosper.
Acculturation can be a two-edged sword, however, particularly when it
is imposed forcefully on ethnic minorities. This constitutes a major obstacle
to the cultivation of patriotism in a multiethnic state. The challenge arises
because ethnic minorities have great potential for nationalism. Forced
acculturation may~ provoke ethnic minorities to defend their cultural
traditions. This, in turn, may prompt nationalistic mobilization of their own
cultural ethnic group rather than patriotic mobilization on behalf of the state.
In a contest between patriotism and nationalism, there is no doubt as to
the outcome. The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism is far more potent than
that of patriotism. In many multiethnic states, nationalism of ethnic minority
groups is visible in terms of separatism, irredentism, and ethnic mobilization.
It is a deep-seated source of instability in multiethnic states today.
To appreciate the challenge to patriotism arising from ethnic minority
nationalism, it is useful to categorize multiethnic states into two distinct
types: those which evolved through immigration and those which evolved
through conquest. In the former, potential challenges stemming from ethnic
minority nationalism are likely to be relatively few, perhaps nonexistent. This
is due to the fact that most ethnic minorities in immigrant societies have
voluntarily become members of the adopted country for reasons of
socioeconomic mobility. They are more prepared to adopt symbols and
identities of the majority culture as their own. In addition, immigrants tend to
disperse geographically, thus they rarely constitute cohesive cultural ethnic
groups. As a result, preconditions for nationalistic mobilization tend to be
absent among immigrant minorities. Indeed, immigrant minorities are
particularly responsive to patriotic mobilization or military action on behalf
of the state.
The situation is very different in multiethnic states with a legacy of
conquest (including colonialism). In this case, ethnic minorities tend to form
cohesive cultural ethnic groups, often geographically concentrated in tradi-
tional homelands. In many cases the majority group is also the historical
conqueror and, therefore, the traditional foe. Attempts to acculturate
minorities into the majority’s culture may thus encounter stiff resistance.
For members of minority groups, mobilization for warfare on behalf of
the state often represents an ambiguous, questionable undertaking. In some
Nationalism and Patriotism 161

circumstances, fighting on behalf of the state may be viewed as a route to

improving one’s acceptance by the majority, thereby enhancing individual
inclusive fitness maximization. But under different circumstances, refusal to
fight or perhaps a willingness to join the state’s enemy might be viewed as a
more promising alternative to protecting one’s nucleus ethnicity. This
ambiguity affects, and is affected by, nationalistic stirrings and mobilization.
In multiethnic states of this type, therefore, ethnic minority nationalism can
be a threat to state cohesion and stability. In such contexts, patriotic
mobilization can be a relatively difficult task. The United States illustrates a
multiethnic state that has evolved primarily through immigration, whereas
the USSR illustrates a multiethnic society that has evolved through conquest.

FORMALIZATION
To consolidate the discussion thus far, consider the following assumptions.

Assumption 7.5. Patriotism, as a mass mobilization device, is distinct

from nationalism. It has evolved and been refined to promote loyalty to the
state as opposed to nation-state. The state per se is defined territorially and
politically and is multiethnic in composition.
Assumption 7.6. The mobilization power of patriotism is contingent on
its inclusive fitness logic. The inclusive fitness logic of patriotism means
simply that individual members of a multiethnic state attempt to identify their
inclusive fitness priorities with the security and welfare of the state. Whether
the state emerges as the preferred group for inclusive fitness maximization is
determined by the identification mechanism.
Assumption 7.7. The identification mechanism, and thus patriotism, is
handicapped by a lack of common culture and ethnic characteristics among
citizens of the state. Thus, the identification mechanism faces automatic
ambiguity when evaluating the state as a potential candidate for preferred
group membership.
Assumption 7.8. Patriotism is less handicapped when it is not challenged
by nationalism of ethnic minorities. Alternatively, it becomes more
handicapped when ethnic minorities within the state are cohesive cultural
ethnic groups capable of nationalistic mobilization.
Assumption 7.9. When challenged by ethnic minority nationalism,
patriotism is typically undermined. The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism
is stronger than the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism. Mobilization for
warfare at the level of the state is weakened.
Assumption 7.10. Two types of multiethnic states can be identified. One
has evolved as an immigrant society. The cultivation of patriotism tends to be
relatively successful in immigrant societies because the threat of ethnic
162 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

minority nationalism is low or non-existent. The other has evolved from

conquest. In these states patriotism is typically challenged by ethnic minority
nationalism.

Patriotism, like nationalism, thus emerges as a vestige of humanity’s

propensity for warfare. Though weaker than nationalism as a mobilization
device, it speaks to ultimate utilities (inclusive fitness maximization). It
conveys information about available recognition markers, addressing cogni-
tive and emotive processes in the identification mechanism. It is used by
leaders to convey that the state should be the object of preferred group
membership. And, under the right conditions, it satisfies cognitive and
emotive processes in the identification mechanism to the extent that
individual loyalties are transferred from the nucleus ethnic group to the level
of the multiethnic state.
When loyalties are transferred to the level of the state, so too are
parameters of in-group amity/out-group enmity. The multiethnic state
becomes the in-group, whereas all other nation-states and multiethnic states
become out-groups. Targets for out-group conflict are thus readily identified
in a balance-of-power world. When loyalties are not successfully transferred,
the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism competes with patriotic appeals for
mobilization at the state level. The impression that humanity’s propensity for
warfare is weakened is true in only one sense however. Patriotic mobilization
may collapse but nationalistic mobilization for warfare among more
homogeneous cultural ethnic groups will invariably emerge.
To illustrate the inclusive fitness logic of nationalism we now consider
two case studies, the United States and the USSR.

United States

OVERVIEW
U.S. patriotism is a potent. mobilization force. Its.success
is nothing short of
spectacular given the highly..mixed cultural and ethnic makeup of its
population, its vast territory, and its relatively decentralized political system.
Lacking a common cultural and ethnic background and denied recourse to
any notion of common descent, American patriotism
has drawn upon other,
secular sources as rallying points. For example, the American Constitution
marks the founding of a community through an act of violent revolution. As a
political ideal of democracy and liberty, it is both culturally and ethnically
neutral. Its principles have been disseminated widely in schooling and
religious institutions to inspire the loyalty of Americans, both new and old.
Nationalism and Patriotism 163

The Constitution has, therefore, become an emotionally charged symbol of

unity and loyalty. In the company of the flag, the national anthem, and daily
ritualized pledges of allegiance, the Constitution embodies a “core identity”
of a new people (Curti 1946; Karsten 1978).

DISCUSSION
Success of American patriotism as a mobilization tool for warfare is apparent
in the willingness of most American citizens to fight for their country. For
example, in World Wars I and II, immigrants responded rapidly to requests
for volunteers far out of proportion to their representation in the population.
Of 3,216 Congressional Medals of Honor conferred up to and including the
Vietnam War, more than one-sixth went to foreign-born soldiers originating
from 32 different countries — a proportion much higher than shares of the
foreign-born in the U.S. population (Fuchs 1984).
American blacks, an ethnic group that did not immigrate voluntarily,
have also been consistently overrepresented in all branches of the armed
forces since desegregation in 1948. Their voluntary contribution in both the
Korean and the Vietnam wars was highly significant (Schenider 1984; Terry
1984). Their representation in the armed forces by rank has also improved.
By the early 1970s, 45 percent of all black officers attained the rank of major
or above, as against 37 percent overall (Young 1982). Native Indians, an
ethnic group conquered during the formation of U.S. society, have also
lobbied for the right to serve in the U.S. armed forces (Holm 1981).
Japanese Americans powerfully illustrate the success of patriotism in the
United States. Two months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, President
Roosevelt authorized the internment of over 120,000 Americans of Japanese
ancestry. Yet, when Japanese Americans were permitted to form the 442nd
U.S. Regimental Combat Team, there were five times more volunteers than
required. Alongside the 100th Battalion (formed also with Japanese Ameri-
cans from the mainland), the 442nd fought in Europe and became the most
decorated unit in American military history. The two units, consisting of
33,000 men, suffered more than 9,000 casualties (Fuchs 1984).
Japanese remaining in the internment camps were asked to register their
loyalty to the United States in 1943 by answering the question “will you
swear unqualified allegiance to the [United States]... and foreswear any form
of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor?” Over 80 percent of
them said “yes” (U.S. Department of the Interior 1946). Thus, patriotic
sentiments among Japanese Americans overcame overt discrimination,
persecution, and appeals to direct their loyalty to their previous homeland.
The potency of American patriotism is further illustrated by the Vietnam
War. As unpopular as the war was, only 14,000 men did not report for
164 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

service, a mere 0.7 percent of the two million men involved. Those both for
and against America’s involvement in Vietnam appealed to patriotism in
seeking justification of their respective positions in America’s patriotic ideals
(Young 1984).3
Critics may point out that the armed forces traditionally represent
avenues of social mobility, particularly for poorer segments of the population
(Schenider 1984), and, hence, are the cause of disproportionately high rates
of participation by immigrants and blacks. This explanation agrees with our
hypothesis that loyalty to American society results from a citizen’s ability to
identify his or her respective inclusive fitness with the country’s security and
welfare. In the United States, access to social mobility provides a positive
environment for inclusive fitness maximization for new immigrants who
must climb from the lower strata of society. Thus, participation in the armed
forces at times of conflict/warfare serves as a “‘rite of passage” for new
immigrants. It gains societal acceptance for minorities which, in turn,
enhances their socioeconomic mobility. Thus, immigrants and their children
are typically anxious to assert loyalty by enlisting in the armed forces in
disproportionate numbers. It is American socioeconomic mobility and
opportunity that has transformed the children of immigrants into patriots.*

SUMMING UP
Patriotism in the United States succeeds as a mobilization device at times of
conflict/warfare because its inclusive fitness logic is able to function
unimpeded. More than any other country, the United States has defined
loyalty in strictly political terms, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion
(Fuchs 1984). It permits relatively high levels of socioeconomic mobility,
lending substance to the claim that the United States is a “land of
opportunity” (Sowell 1983). It develops patriotic consciousness at the grass
roots level through anthems, flags, and so on, thus helping to cement
relationships among primary social groups and families (Curti 1946;
Grodzins 1956; Janowitz 1984). Patriotic consciousness is further enhanced
by acculturation processes that are voluntarily pursued by new immigrants
(Archdeacon 1983). And, American patriotism has evolved without competi-
tion from ethnic minority nationalism (Connor 1983). These factors have
allowed the identification mechanism to select the United States of America,
in its entirety, as the preferred group despite the society’s ethnic and cultural
diversity. The potency of American patriotism lies in its successful linking of
the individual’s inclusive fitness considerations with the protection of
American ideals, sociopolitical system, security, and power.
Nationalism and Patriotism 165

USSR

OVERVIEW
The USSR is a multiethnic state of over 100 “nationalities.” It has evolved
froma long history of conquest, which began with imperial Tsarist expansion
and was continued by the Soviet regime after the October 1917 revolution.
During the Stalin era, the Soviet regime contributed significantly to ethnic
cleavages within the USSR. The early 5-year plans, consisting of brutal
programs of land collectivization, purges, and the “pacification” of Muslim
minorities in the Asian republics of the USSR, resulted in antagonistic
relations between the Russian majority and ethnic minorities (Carrere
d’Encausse 1979; Snyder 1982; Bennigsen and Broxup 1983; Clem 1983;
Burg 1984). As a result, the territorial and historical roots of ethnic
minorities, coupled with their cultural and historical differences, have
rendered ethnic identities potent forces in political matters (Karklins 1986).
Soviet patriotism must therefore cope with the divisive characteristics of
a multiethnic society. Muslim minorities in central Soviet Asia are par-
ticularly troublesome because their religious traditions are at odds with both
the Christian culture of the Russian majority and the Soviet Marxist—Leninist
ideology. Muslim minorities can be further differentiated from the Russian
majority by language, culture, and phenotypic characteristics. Many also
reside in their traditional homeland with very little contact with Russians and
the Russian language (Young 1982). They have been observed to be highly
endogamous and persistent in adhering to their religious belief system
(Rockett 1981).
In spite of extensive efforts by the Soviet state to acculturate Muslim
Soviet
minorities, a growing national consciousness is on the rise among
Muslim groups (Roi 1984). In view of demographic trends which project that
2000,
the Russian majority will become a numerical minority by the year
many scholars view Muslim nationalities as a potentia l source of political
1976).
instability. In fact, some see minority growth as a time bomb (Keenan

DISCUSSION
USSR, Soviet
Despite the presence of ethnic minority nationalism in the
ction have produced a
ideology maintains that decades of socialist constru
to this ideolog y, the entire
new kind of citizen — the Soviet patriot. According
a commo n territor y and a
population of the USSR has been unified by
Marxist -Lenini st lines
common purpose of building communism along
To cultivat e Soviet patrio-
(Bennigsen and Broxup 1983; Wimbush 1985).
virtues of the
tism, the state also appeals to traditional values, particularly
166 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

family. A Soviet patriot is ideally one who labors both for his or her family
and the common good, the two supposedly being indistinguishable (Carrere
d’Encausse 1980). Thus, the Soviet government has sought to create a fusion
of loyalty and commitment to family and society on the one hand and to the
state as the fatherland of socialism on the other (Bennigsen and Broxup
1983).
To glorify the Soviet patriot, no effort has been spared by the government
to speak to the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism. First, the Commissariat of
Enlightenment was established in 1920 to impart political education to all
Soviet citizens, particularly those who were not members of the Communist
party. Students at all levels, from elementary schools to universities, were
taught, replete with references to a founding ideology and struggles to insure
its integrity, to pledge their allegiance to the larger political entity (the Soviet
Union).These programs were part of a formal system of political instruction
which involved over 20 million participants up to the mid-1970s (White
1979). Second, to assure acculturation, the Russian language was delegated
the official language of the country.
Despite such efforts, the promotion of Soviet patriotism has been
seriously hampered not only by ethnic minority nationalism but by Russian
nationalism. Notwithstanding official emphasis on the equality of all Soviet
citizens, there are claims, both subtle and explicit, that White Russians are the
most “developed” on the path to communism. The Russians are the “elder
brothers” and serve as the model for all other non-Russians. The Russian
language is deemed singularly important as the means of “‘acquiring a sound
knowledge of modern science and technology, art, and literature” (Kumanov
1977, 101). It is also the language of command in the Soviet army where
Russians dominate the officer corps (Young 1982). Thus, soldiers with strong
ethnic attachments who are unable or unwilling to adopt the Russian
language tend to be marginalized. “Russification” of the USSR today does
not have violent overtones of the Stalin era, but there can be no doubt it
continues subtly.
When stripped of rhetoric, Soviet patriotism can be readily equated with
Russian nationalism. Soviet art and literature are dominated by themes
glorifying Russian achievement, including past military victories of imperial
Russia (Zaslavsky 1980). World War II is referred to as the “‘Great Patriotic
War” fought mostly by Russians. The Russian term for motherland, rodina,
is quintessentially Russian. It really means “Mother Russia.” As Kerr
observes (1978, p. 170), rodina has a special meaning to Russians: “It is their
manner of speech, the ground they walk on, the sturgeon that swim in the
Volga, the quiet waters of the silent Don ... .” Thus, rodina cannot really be
shared by non-Russian ethnic minorities.
Nationalism and Patriotism 167

Soviet patriotism is, therefore, undermined by the presence of ethnic

minority nationalism as well as by the chauvinistic nature of Russian
nationalism. Yet Soviet patriotism is upheld as official doctrine by the
Russian majority, perhaps as a mobilization tool to manipulate non-Russian
nationalities. Refusal to comply might well provoke firm and swift punish-
ment. Recall, for example, Stalin’s liquidation of several nationalities and the
forced relocation of others suspected of collaborating with the Germans
during World War Il.

SUMMING UP
As a mobilization device for conflict/warfare Soviet patriotism faces a
dilemma. It may appear powerful, but in reality it is Russian nationalism per
se that provides its impetus and sustaining power. Soviet patriotism involves
a contradiction between maintaining Russian priorities throughout the
Union and giving official recognition to selected non-Russian nationalities. In
future conflicts involving the USSR, the viability of Soviet patriotism will
depend on whether officially recognized non-Russian nationalities can be
persuaded into pursuing a common course with the Russian majority. If they
can, loyalties of ethnic minorities will be transferred to the level of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics, boundaries of in-group amity/out-group enmity
will extend beyond ethnic minority nationalism, and targets of out-group
conflict will be readily identified. If non-Russian nationalities cannot be
persuaded to pursue a common course with the Russian majority, Soviet
patriotism will be reduced to a hollow shell, to Russian nationalism in
disguise. The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism will then direct individual
loyalties to their ethnic group first and foremost, and intergroup conflict will
predominate within state boundaries.

CONCLUSION

The power of nationalism and patriotism, as mobilization devices in warfare,

is contingent on congruence of recognition markers. and_affective intensity
among them. In the context of a nation-state (that is, a cultural ethnic group
that has attained sovereignty and independence), congruence of recognition
e
markers and strong affective intensity yield the potential of fiercely aggressiv
nationalism. Whether such nationalism is vented or not will depend on
threats.
balance-of-power considerations and, more specifically, on external
Absence of external threats does not rule out propensities for warfare,
-
however. Nationalism persists because the inclusive fitness logic of national
the nation
ism speaks the language of the identification mechanism. It renders
 168 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

a suprafamily for its members, and it transforms a narrowly based ethnic

consciousness (one based on kin groups, villages, or local communities) to a
broadly based national consciousness. It also entrenches the nation (the in-
group) in the individual’s mind; and readily identifies members of other
nations as potential enemies in a balance-of-power world. Indeed, nationalis-
tic interests usually constitute a threat to others because they precede interests
of other groups and are often satisfied at the expense of competitor groups.
The inclusive fitness logic of nationalism in Japan, South Africa
(Afrikaners), Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan have produced one indisputable
outcome. When self-sacrificial behaviors are called for in warfare, they are
given spontaneously. To many observers, such behaviors appear untypical if
not irrational or crazy. From the perspectiveof theinclusive fitness logic of
nationalism and the identification.mechanism, however, the kamikazes of
World War II Japan, the martyrdom.of.young Iranians onthe Iragi—Iranian
battlefields, and the indomitable..spirit-ofAfghan.guerrillas make perfect
sense.
~ Patriotism tries. todo what nationalism cannot do in multiethnic
societies. It tries to motivate individuals to relate their inclusive fitness
priorities to membership in a larger group, regardless of their cultural and
ethnic background. Recall that congruence of the five recognition markers
discussed in chapter 5 isnot possible in multiethnic states. Affective intensity,
or the emotional bond attaching individuals to the multiethnic state, is thus
necessarily weakened. But recall also that the identification mechanism is
constantly on the lookout to serve inclusive fitness priorities in such contexts
and that environments can be manipulated to make multiethnic states
attractive. This can be accomplished in positive ways by increasing benefits to
pledging one’s allegiance to the state. Prospects for socioeconomic mobility
represent one such benefit in the context of the United States. Such attempts
can also be undermined, however, when patriotic appeals must compete with
nationalistic sentiments of ethnic minorities, as in the case of the USSR.
In environments shaped by balance-of-power considerations, leaders of
multiethnic states go to great lengths to appeal to the inclusive fitness logic of
C
) patriotism. They learn to appeal to things sacred, to the cognitive and emotive
) processes in the identification mechanism. They do so to tap inclusive fitness
| biases for aggression/conflict and transfer them to the level of the state. When
they succeed, patriotic calls for sacrifice in warfare render citizens of
multiethnic states potent fighters on the battlefield.

NOTES
1. Its development has been attributed to the rapid pace of industrialization/urbanization
and the collapse of old empires. The pivotal role of the intelligentsia in its articulation and
Nationalism and Patriotism 169

popularization has also been widely noted (Hechter 1975; A. D.Smith 1982). Thus, most
scholars of contemporary European nation-states have focused on (1) the configuration of
events that gave rise to nationalism in the past 200 years and (2) beliefs that contemporary
national and ethnic communities can and should form the legitimate basis of a political state
(Philip 1980; Navari 1981; Orridge 1981; Tivey 1981; Rogowski 1985). With respect to the
Third World, studies have focused on anticolonialism as a primary mover in the phenomenal
growth and proliferation of nationalism in the twentieth century (Connor 1972; A. D. Smith
1979);
2. Traditionally, the Shias were an antiestablishment group. They grew out of a protest
movement involving a clash with the majority Sunni sect of Islam. The rulers of Persia adopted
the Shia doctrine in the 1500s to distinguish themselves from the Ottoman Empire’s Sunni
muslims. Thus, the Iranian Shias were easily mobilized in the anti-Shah campaign. Iran’s
ethnocentrism today is very much a case of Shias against Sunni heretics, the latter residing largely
outside of Iran.
3. Given the inclusive fitness logic of patriotism, the Vietnam conflict did not and could not
automatically lead to grass-roots mobilization in the United States. At no point did Vietnamese
communists pose a realistic or unambiguous threat to the average American’s inclusive fitness
priorities. Thus, patriotism could be used effectively to support arguments both for and against
U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
4. It should be noted that the United States is not immune from violent ethnic conflicts,
particularly those between whites and nonwhites (Alexander 1980). Nor does the highlighting of
American patriotism necessarily preclude some retention of ethnic identity. Indeed, the two are
often highly compatible (Parming and Cheung 1980).
 ; ana hen
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PART LV

Mobilizing for Action:

An Overview
To put our theory to work, to convince people of its implications for their
own role in warfaring, several hurdles must be confronted. These hurdles
include biases and ideological blinders which. affect.the way. people.think
about war. They also concern.attachments.to.the traditional approaches to
peace — tactics which have largely failed. Put differently, paving the way fora
new way of thinking about warfare means we cannot naively leap into the
policy arena expecting ‘‘open.arms.” Rather, we anticipate
that some readers
will emphasize contemporary, proximate causes of warfare to the virtual
exclusion of ultimate ones. Disciplinary biases will deter others from taking
an interdisciplinary perspective seriously. Still others will embrace ideologi-
cal and, perhaps, religious blinders to the exclusion of any theory with
evolutionary underpinnings.
A first step in applying our theory, therefore, is to show how contempo-
rary interpretations of warfaring, disciplinary biases, and ideological-blinders
can cloud understanding of the deep structure of humanity’s propensity for
warfare. Chapter 8 attempts to demonstrate this using nine propositions.
These propositions serve not only to broaden research implications of our
theory. They illustrate how we would be inclined to.respond to queries from
alternate interpretations of warfare when “armed with.our theory.”
Chapter 9 delves into the policy frontier. Does peace have a chance?
Certainly, an informed answer to this question is one of extreme pessimism.
We examine three traditional approaches to peace to explain why pessimism
is well founded: top-down approaches such as the United Nations, bottom-
up approaches such as peace movements, and initiatives to change thinking.
Drawing on our theory, we then outline what a new, more promising
approach might entail.
CHAPTER &

On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends

INTRODUCTION

In a radio interview, we were asked how much time had been invested in
developing our theory. We replied, 8 years so far. We were quick to add,
however, that this was only a fraction of a 30-year research program we
envisioned. The interviewer’s next question surprised us: “But what more is
there to do? You have finished the theory, it seems reasonable, and you have
used it to reinterpret many kinds of conflict.”
To answer the interviewer’s question would require another book. At the
yery least, each of the four building blocks in our theory must be evaluated by
critics, tested where possible, and reformulated where required. The life of a
theory is inevitably one of continual revision and attempts to falsify it. In the
interim, our reinterpretation of coups d’état in Africa, nationalism, and
patriotism (chapters 6 and 7) will also benefit from critical evaluation,
extension, and, where necessary, revision. This will involve additional
analysis of secondary historical sources, existing empirical data, and new
data collection.
Equally important, we expect many readers will resist an evolutionary
approach to humanity’s propensity for warfare due to disciplinary biases,
allegiance to competing interpretations, and misrepresentation or misunder-
standing of our work. This expectation is based on past experience. For every
reader or critic who responds positively to the evolutionary perspective, there
are those whose reaction closes doors to productive research. Some have been
involved in research programs that narrowly emphasize contemporary,
proximate causes of warfare to the exclusion of an evolutionary perspective.
 174 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Others, sensitive to nature versus nurture controversies, have been quick to

categorize our approach as largely nature and reject it out of hand. Still
others, bound by disciplinary or ideological biases, regard interdisciplinary
research with suspicion.
Needless to say, research implications should not be limited to individ-
uals who agree with our theory and then set out to evaluate it. It should also
challenge or complement ongoing research agendas. Should our theory
complement a contemporary approach to studying warfare, the questions
asked and the variables considered might be more focused. Should our theory
challenge a contemporary approach, research might benefit by abandoning
particular questions or variables and emphasizing others.
To clarify the research implications of our theory, we identify nine areas~
of potential disagreement, confusion, or misinterpretation. These include (1)
arms race models, (2) the military—industrial complex as a cause of warfare,
(3) the relevance of Marxism/Communism to warfare, (4) the relative
< importance of men versus women as perpetrators of warfaring propensities,
(5) the male supremist complex as an evolutionary cause of warfare, (6) the _)
differences between our approach and implications of the prisoner’s dilemma /
or game theory, (7) relevance of morals and just-war traditions to warfaring’
propensities, (8) the role of religion, and (9) the innateness or inevitability of
\ it all.
We address these points of confusion or disagreement in the form of nine
propositions. A risk is involved, however. Because space considerations rule
out comprehensive review of relevant literature and exhaustive defense of
each proposition, we may be “damned” for venturing into “thick territory”
superficially. However, we perceive a greater risk of being “damned if we
don’t.” At the very least, each proposition illustrates how we would be
inclined to respond to queries from alternate interpretations or approaches to
warfaring, when armed with our theory.

CONFRONTING ALTERNATIVE THEORIES

Proposition 8.1. Arms race models are potentially strong on consequences

but unquestionably weak on causes of humanity’s propensity for warfare.
The pioneering work of Richardson (1960), a physicist, attempts to
describe “what would occur if instinct and tradition were allowed to act
uncontrolled.” By “‘instinct”’ and “tradition,” Richardson refers to fear of
potential aggressors, rivalry, and revenge. These crude concepts are opera-
tionalized to produce a mathematical, action—reaction model where (1)
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 175

action—reaction in the buildup of armaments is predicted along a classic

reaction curve, (2) action by country A need not always be preceded by
increased military expenditure by country B, but may result from deep-seated
revenge, and (3) reaction may be reduced by fatigue, such as a diminishing
economic capacity to finance a continuing arms race.
We draw attention to Richardson’s model because it has been adopted, in
one form or another, by a surprising number of analysts of international
conflict. Why? Because it has been successful in tracking or simulating
consequences of several arms races up to the point of war. From our
perspective, however, there are numerous problems. One is that a crucial
implication of the model — that if country A reduces its arms, then country B
will also — has failed to materialize. Second, the model does not explain why
armaments may be initiated by a country not involved in an arms race. Third,
the model is unrealistic in its assumption of symmetric reaction (that A reacts
to B, and B reacts to A in a mutually sensitive way). Fourth, it focuses on
bilateral relationships, thus excluding reactions through allies. Fifth, the
model uses military expenditure data to measure “‘threat”’ or “fear” when
what is really threatening is the combination of intent and capability to inflict
damage (Chadwick 1986). Sixth, and most important, Richardson-type
models are weakest on the causes of humanity’s propensity for warfare.
Limitations of Richardson-type models have received thorough scrutiny
by several authors (Tullock 1974; Lambert 1979; Nincic and Cusack 1979).
Gray (1974), for example, faults such models because states, in the best
rational-actor fashion, choose to compete in arms races for reasons which to
them appear good and sufficient, but which lie outside action/reaction
considerations. They may be used to intimidate an adversary without using
force, to adjust power without crisis or war, or to ensure the continued
dominance of the status quo. Hammond’s (1975) analysis of arms races
between 1840 and 1941 is very much in keeping with proposition 8.1 in its
conclusion that such phenomena show just one aspect of the many ways that
states seek to restore, create, or maintain a particular pattern of power over
resources within the state system. Chadwick (1986) defends Richardson-type
models, but with strong caveats that future work must take into considera-
tion levels of national interests at stake, national intent to mobilize for
warfare, costs involved in arms buildups, and the fact that military
expenditures may be an act of cooperation to fulfill treaty obligations
between nations or to fend off a common enemy.
Turning to the causes of humanity’s propensity for warfare, notions of
fear, rivalry and revenge in Richardson-type models are akin to only one
building block in our theory; balance-of-power considerations. Ultimate
utilities to be maximized are absent, the sociopsychology of warfaring
176 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

propensities are entirely simplistic, and costs—benefits of preparing for war

are weakly represented. The model takes on relevance for research only when
it assumes what we have sought to explain — that humanity does, indeed,
have a propensity for warfare. Only then does it track or simulate balance-of-
power consequences involving military expenditures by potential adver-
saries, and not too well at that.
Proposition 8.2. Marxian explanations of warfare, founded on histor-
ical interpretations of class and class struggle, are largely superficial, whereas
communism is but another vehicle through which humanity’s propensity for
warfare finds expression.
Marxian explanations of warfare stem from narrow historical inter-
pretations of class and class struggles. They neglect hominid evolution in the
balance-of-power process. They fail to deal with the issue of humanity’s
propensity for warfare. And, they have limited relevance to contemporary
warfare, let alone threats of nuclear annihilation.
Marx’s philosophy is one of historical determinism (Marx 1849b).
Historical developments are seen as an outgrowth of ever-present antago-
nisms between property-owning classes versus propertyless classes. These
classes can take the form of slave owners versus slaves as in Greco-Roman
times, feudal lords versus peasants as in Medieval times, or capitalists versus
industrial working classes in more contemporary periods. Forever at odds
with one another because of fundamentally opposing class interests, the
struggles that ensue, sometimes involving revolution or war, propel history
forward.
Marx perceived war to be justified when waged by the oppressed class
against the oppressors (Marx 1871). Indeed, he envisioned that a world war
might be initiated by oppressed peoples everywhere against England, the
archcapitalist empire of his time (Marx 1849a). Alternatively, when wars are
fought between ruling classes (those with power), they are seen as unjustified,
motivated by greed, power mongering, and the desire to possess control over
additional resources.
The Marxian interpretation of warfare has two problems. First, its
perspective on human prehistory is at odds with evidence from evolutionary
biology, ethology, and anthropology. Prior to recorded history, Marx
envisioned a peaceful, albeit primitive state of communal existence for Homo
sapiens. During these times, private property was absent because the
productive capacity of subsistence economies was so low that, after daily
consumption, nothing was left to be hoarded for private property accumula-
tion. Everyone shared what was available. In turn, without private property
there was no division of classes. Without class and class struggles, there was
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 177

no war. This state of “‘primeval peace” is sometimes referred to as an original

version of communism (Marx and Engels 1848).
Our theory argues otherwise. On examining the balance-of-power
process (chapter 3), it is more likely that mutual predation among hunter—
gatherer bands played a crucial role in the evolution of hominid groups.
Alternatively, by focusing narrowly on class struggle, the Marxian approach
ignores 99 percent of humanity’s evolution when groups were of roughly
equal size and power yet clashed over threats of competitive exclusion. It
therefore neglects the consequences of intergroup hostilities during evolu-
tion, particularly those affecting epigenesis (xenophobia) and cognitive
psychological predispositions (ethnocentrism).
A second problem with the Marxian interpretation concerns its contem-
porary relevance. Since the October Revolution of 1917, which produced the
first communist state, the communist bloc has grown to include states in
eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. These
states, presumably classless societies, have not escaped interstate hostilities
and warfare. Though contemporary Marxist theorists explain away these
anomalies by weaving ad hoc arguments, it is clear that Marx’s central thesis
of class struggle as the sole cause of war has been seriously undermined.
The threat of species annihilation in a nuclear era presents Marxian
theory with yet another dilemma. One of the superpowers, the USSR, is a
communist state. Its ever-growing arsenal of nuclear missiles constitutes one-
half the threat of nuclear war. That is, confrontation involves not oppressed
and oppressors, but two states of roughly equal power (the USSR and the
United States). Thus, the USSR is involved in a confrontation that must be
judged as unjustified by Marxian theory. Moreover, the survival of mankind
clearly takes precedence over class struggles (should the United States
somehow be perceived as an oppressor), yet the USSR is incapable of
disengaging itself from preparing for war. To deal with this dilemma, we
must look beyond Marxian analysis and class struggle for answers. This is
essential to decode propensities for warfare and their ultimate, evolutionary
underpinnings.
Proposition 8.3. The idea that humanity’s propensity for warfare is an
out-growth of a bellicose military mentality, perpetuated by powerful
institutions such as the military-industrial complex, is at best relevant to
contemporary society. Moreover, it is only partially true. History reveals that
civilians have been mainly responsible for making war decisions.
A popular misconception is that warfaring propensities are caused by
influential institutions, or uncontrollable, irrational leaders. Our theory,
argues otherwise. Humanity’s propensity for warfare lies squarely at the feet
178 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

of the individual with most military conflicts authorized by elected represen-

tatives of the people. The notion that “states” do not act, whereas individual
decision-makers do, is widely supported in historical studies of war (Farrar:
1978); in modern-day Soviet military policy (Legters 1978); and in U.S.
involvement in post-Second-World-War conflicts. Take the Vietnam War as
an example. U.S. congressional records reveal that decisions concerning the
mass bombardments of North Vietnam were made in a calm and business-
like fashion by elected American civilian representatives. Furthermore, if we
evaluate popular assumptions concerning the so-called “‘military-industrial
complex,” we find no consistent evidence that such arrangements have had a
significant impact on the direction of foreign policy (Brodie 1972). Nor have
they initiated or renewed an arms race in any country (Gray 1974).! At best,
the military-industrial complex in Western societies has effectively lobbied
for foreign and domestic arms contracts, the military establishment has
conducted espionage operations, thereby violating civilian control, and the
gap between Congressional understanding and control over war power may
be widening as military technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and
covert (Yarnolinsky and Foster 1983). Though the latter consideration
occasionally compromises civilian control, it remains a fact that the head of
state in most societies is also the commander in chief of the armed forces.
Moreover, constitutions usually prescribe that legislative bodies alone have
the power to declare war.
Concerning uncontrollable national leaders, it is true that commanders
in chief wield considerable power, may misuse it, and are in positions to
influence the mobilization of citizens for war. Hitler is a prime example. But
no one would maintain that Hitler could have succeeded in mobilizing for
war had nationalistic sentiments not been strong among the German people.
Perhaps the best example of societal support comes from the medical
profession — individuals sworn by the Hippocratic oath to serve and protect
the needs of all individuals, regardless of race or class. We are speaking here
of the role of Nazi doctors in the Holocaust. Lifton (1986) tracks the
progression of medical killing from enforced sterilization of Jews through the
killing of “impaired” children and adults to the mass killings of the
extermination camps. In Lifton’s view, nothing is darker, more menacing, or
more difficult to accept than the participation of a society’s physicians in such
activity. But, as Kuper (1987) points out, is such behavior more horrifying
than the role of the Dominicans in the Inquisition, or the incitement of
pogroms by Christian priests, or the involvement of Communist cadres in the
mass starvation of Ukranians during the manmade famine of 1932-1933?
The point is, all of these behaviors have been sustained by systems of belief
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 179

that motivate, rationalize, justify, or tolerate mass killings by individuals,

including status quo military agents.
Concerning warfaring propensities and individuals per se, military
service in ancient and modern republics alike has been contingent on
citizenship, that is, on the willingness of citizens to serve and fight (Cohen
1985). In many countries citizenship is often conferred — or conferred more
fully — by virtue of having defended the nation. During the U.S. Civil War,
for example, the Union recruited soldiers in Europe by promising them
citizenship in return for military service. At the end of the Vietnam War the
franchise was extended to 18 year olds in the United States, reflecting the
belief that those who defend the nation should have rights of full citizenship.
U.S. blacks and native Indians struggled not only to serve, but to serve in
combat, explicitly recognizing that it is harder to withhold full citizenship
from a group willing to die for the nation. The struggle of U.S. women to serve
in combat can be interpreted in the same light (Berryman 1985).
Proposition 8.4. Humanity’s propensity for warfare is equally prevalent
among women and men.
That warfare is perpetuated by males is a misconception based on
superficial observation. Proponents of this view point to the male warrior
tradition where young men are initiated into martial activity as a rite of
adulthood, the prevalence of males in combat situations, and the far greater
involvement of males in crimes of violence such as murder and rape.
e problem with observed correlations between males and warfare is
t they ignore evolution. Greater visibility of males in warfaring can be
ibuted to division of labor whereby both males and females contribute to
clusive fitness (survival and reproduction) in different, though complemen-
ry ways. During humanity’s past, hunting environments required brute
. Accordingly, males were selected for greater physical strength. Where
rfare was involved, this strength was readily transferred to the battlefield.
At the same time, however, women were armed as “‘protectors of the means
of reproduction.” Though invisible on primitive battlefields, they contrib-
uted equally to inclusive fitness by (1) assuming supportive or help-mate roles
for their male, combative counterparts and (2) assuming defensive/protector-
ate roles for the group’s offspring and means of genetic reproduction.
Perhaps male warfaring hypotheses have gained popular appeal because
the history of weapons, wars, and defense spending has been written largely
by men, as though women didn’t exist (Enloe 1983). Yet, it was Margaret
Mead, an anthropologist, who observed that women played a crucial role as
defenders of reproduction. Also, Mary Beard’s social history of women,
published in 1946, convincingly argues there was no type of war in which
women did not participate:
180 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

They were among the primitive hordes which went on looting expeditions
against their neighbors or stood fast on their own ground in defense of their lives,
herds and fields. Old Roman records testify to the savagery of women in the
Cambrian tribes that swept down from the north into Rome. [Beard 1946, 279]

Turning to more recent times, Enloe (1983) observes that women play
important supportive roles in warfare. In modern revolutionary or guerrilla
activity, they have served as supply carriers and spies. For example, virtually
all Zimbabwean women participated in their country’s war of liberation.
Many married women followed male guerrilla fighters to staging zones in
Mozambique to serve as cooks, nurses, and laundresses in the camps. In
modern military institutions, women make important contributions to
voluntary organizations, often as military wives. For example, the British
military depends on the volunteers, nurses, and social workers (mostly
women) of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Air Force Association (SSAFA) as well as
on its own chaplains, psychiatrists, and medical officers (mostly men) to cope
with problems of military families (Enloe 1983). As Holm (1982) puts it,
American women have become so essential to the military that it would be
next to impossible to field a standing peacetime force of 2.1 million
volunteers without them. And, at times of war, “crisis participation” of
women in combat or defense roles has been observed in many countries
including the Polish uprising of 1939-1945, Yugoslavia’s War of Resistance,
Vietnam’s War of Insurgence, Algeria’s Anticolonial War, and Israel’s
ongoing conflict with the Arab states.
It is true that women tend to be excluded from combat assault units. But
new technologies (electronics), changes in the division of labor, and reduced
emphasis on physical strength are all working to place women closer to
frontline duties and combat (Goldman 1982). Their role is shifting, therefore,
from one of “support” in noncombatant zones to “support and action” in
potential combat zones. Women themselves are also placing heavy demands
on the military for fuller representation in national defense. In the United
States, for example, representation of women in the army, navy, air force, and
Marine Corps grew from approximately 40,000 (or 1 percent of the active
force) in 1971 to 184,000 (or 8 percent) by 1981. An additional 78,000 were
placed into the reserve units (Holm 1982). Furthermore, about 15 percent of
all women soldiers perform jobs in air defense, artillery, telecommunications,
and mechanical maintenance, thus making the U.S. military the largest single
employer of females in nontraditional military positions (Rustad 1982).
These developments mean that women are merely expressing their propensity
for warfare in different, more in visible ways.
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends
181

Proposition 8.5. As an evolutionary cause of warfare, the male supre-

mist complex is only marginally related to our theory, lacks credibility, and
has virtually no relevance to warfaring propensities in modern societies.
On at least two occasions, critics have erroneously aligned our theory
with the so-called male supremist complex (MSC). To set the stage for MSC,
Divale and Harris (1976) present extensive ethnographic evidence to show
that males have been valued in preindustrial societies because they have hada
sociopolitical monopoly over hunting and military weapons and, perhaps,
are better equipped biologically to fight than females. They further submit
that the prevalence of male power in aggressive/defensive warfare went hand
in hand with or reinforced patrilocal residence (concentration of fraternal
interest groups) and intergroup transfer of males through intermarriage. This
evidence is generally acceptable to most scholars.2
Where we part company with Divale and Harris is over the explanatory
core of the male supremist complex itself. They argue that preferences for
males over females, combined with scarce resources, promote female
infanticide as a stable population strategy. The result — lower female/male
sex ratios — supposedly had the effect of elevating the importance of sex as a
motivator of warfare. Their emphasis is not, however, on access to scarce
females for reproduction per se. Rather, Divale and Harris interpret sex, or
sexual deprivation, as a reinforcer of “fierce and aggressive performances by
males involving risk of life.” We strongly disagree with this interpretation.
Where female—male sex ratios are low and warfare is active (a correlation
does exist), we interpret raiding and capture of females as an attempt to avoid
inbreeding depression (see chapter 5). It is when the ratio of reproductive
partners becomes undesirable and inbreeding depression threatens that
raiding of females through primitive warfare will gain added impetus.
Divale and Harris’ generalization that female infanticide is a preferred
population growth strategy is also dubious. In some cases, it may have been.
But as Dow (1983) points out, Divale and Harris do not show evidence that
preferential female infanticide actually regulates population, that it is a
response to environmental degradation, or that it has led to a stable
population in any of the societies they consider. Bates and Lees (1979) make
the additional point that because primitive human groups were often in
competition, the obvious advantage in most circumstances would lie with
expanding populations, not stable ones. Put differently, Divale and Harris
completely ignore groups as forces of selection and balance-of-power
considerations.
Finally, Divale and Harris have been taken to task on many additional
points concerning the adequacy of their sample, statistical techniques,
empirical measures (which poorly reflect their theoretical constructs), and so
182 ; eae GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE
APR ‘ am 3

on. (see Hirschfeld et al 1978; Lancaster and Lancaster 1978; Norton 1978;
and replies by Divale and Harris 1978a,b). In view of these many
shortcomings, the male supremist complex does not represent a viable
research agenda on the evolutionary underpinnings of warfare.
Proposition 8.6. Game theory, involving the prisoner’s dilemma, pro-
duces an important outcome consistent with our theory. Kin selection
emerges as an evolutionary stable strategy whereas other forms of coopera-
tion and reciprocity are likely to be evolutionarily unstable.
The prisoner’s dilemma is a clever analytical device used by game
theorists to discover what is necessary for cooperation to emerge. Introduced
by Rapoport and Chammah (1965), it has been ingeniously used by Axelrod
(1984) to discern conditions and policies that allow cooperation to prevail.
We address it here because several readers of our work have argued it yields
an alternate view of evolution, one based not so much on intergroup conflict
and competition, but on cooperation. Such comments reveal a superficial
understanding of the prisoner’s dilemma, misrepresentation of its internal
premises, and naive acceptance of policy recommendations flowing from it.
What is the prisoner’s dilemma? It is a simplified game which shows that
rationality of individuals can work against cooperative strategies to the
extent that both individuals actually do worse than were they to cooperate.
The prisoner’s dilemma takes the form of a two-way interaction where two
unrelated individuals must decide to cooperate or not given a known set of
payoffs for cooperating or not cooperating (hereafter, defecting).3
Important questions are prompted by the prisoner’s dilemma. How can
cooperative strategies get a foothold in environments where individual
rationality and self-serving behavior prompt defection? If cooperation gets a
foothold, what is necessary for it to become an evolutionarily stable strategy
(ESS)? That is, what is necessary for it to persist, to dominate the way Homo
sapiens do things, and to resist invasion by external, less cooperative
strategies?
Through a set of experiments which involved prominent game theorists
worldwide, Axelrod provided general answers to these questions. First, in an
environment where individuals are assumed to be rational but basically self-
serving (not truly altruistic), it will always pay to defect when interaction
occurs only once. Put differently, the strategy of defection will always be an
ESS unless prospects for reciprocity can be tried over several interactions (you
cooperate, then I will cooperate). Experience with one’s adversary through
several interactions is thus a requirement.
Second, in an environment where multiple, sequential interactions do
occur, the optimal cooperative strategy is “‘tit-for-tat.”’ You cooperate, so will
I; you defect, so will I. But tit-for-tat emerges as an ESS if and only if
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 183

interactions (trial and error) can be repeated over long periods of time and the
end of the interaction sequence is unknown. If the end is known, it will pay
the last player to defect so as to get the first highest payoff. Thus, stability in
the environment and presumed continued interaction (no end in sight) are
required for tit-for-tat to resist invasion by a nonreciprocal strategy. (Note,
the term cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma and the optimal tit-for-tat
strategy means self-serving reciprocity, not unconstrained altruism, caring,
or empathy towards one’s adversary.)
Where our theory complements Axelrod’s findings is found in his chapter
5, “The Evolution of Cooperation in Biological Systems.” This chapter,
coauthored with W. D. Hamilton, a biologist, was awarded the Newcomb
Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
It provides conditions whereby cooperation could get a foothold in unstable
environments replete with possible defectors. That environment consists of
genetically related kin whereby (1) cooperation is more likely because payoffs
are immediately altered by inclusive fitness considerations (players now share
costs—benefits rather than incur them independently), (2) chances of
reciprocity are increased because relatedness increases the likelihood of
repeated interactions and familiarity, (3) genetic relatedness increases
recognition of other “game players”’ (kin) and, thus, enhances the memory of
past degrees of cooperativeness among players, and (4) free riders or cheaters
are easier to identify and monitor. These conditions, and the observed
prevalence of nepotistic altruism support our conclusion (in chapter 2) that
kin selection qualifies as an ESS (see also Maynard-Smith 1982).
Where Axelrod’s findings and our theory differ is over inferences
attached to a second possible foothold of cooperation. The second foothold is
the emergence of clusters of individuals, or small groups, where conditions of
familiarity, stable environments, enhanced identification of past adversaries,
and memory of past outcomes are present. Axelrod illustrates this situation
by describing the cooperative behavior of adversaries in the trenches of
World War I. Soldiers of each side pursued a live-and-let-live strategy by not
firing on their adversaries (even when they were visible) as long as the other
side reciprocated. This behavior was most prevalent when opposing groups
became familiar with one another due to prolonged occupation of a
particular site. How did it end? Some soldiers who followed it were court-
martialed. Whole battalions were even punished. Most important, however,
were raids devised by headquarters which undermined the unspoken treaties.
Put differently, the realities of strategic planning in warfare, including
preemptive strikes and trickery, undermined the feasibility of enduring
cooperation between real adversaries.
184 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

What is the reality of intergroup warfare that mitigates against such

clusters serving as a foothold of cooperation? One reality is that intergroup
warfare can be an all-or-nothing event. In this context, a key condition for
cooperation is missing in the prisoner’s dilemma — the necessity for repetitive
trial and error interactions whereby a “loss” at time ¢ will not end the game
forever. For example, in humanity’s hunter-gatherer days, naive cooperation
without trial and error interactions might have meant extinction of an entire
nucleus ethnic group. Therefore, it would be better to defect if only one
interaction is possible. Another reality is that balances of power are involved
in intergroup warfare. This means that cooperation between two patties at
time t can be undermined when one party forms a quick alliance with a third
party and then attacks the other party. Such alliances did not occur among
Axelrod’s highly atypical example of small, equally balanced groups of
soldiers in World War I trenches. Between battalions, however, where
artillery firepower and technologies tended to be unequal as well as difficult
to assess, each side was more inclined to plan preemptive strikes. That is,
when unequal group power threatens extinction, the decision by a handful of
individuals to cooperate is likely to be irrelevant (Schmookler 1984).
In this light, Axelrod’s recommendations on how to get out of a
prisoner’s dilemma (or how to manipulate environments to promote
cooperation) are extremely restrictive, if not naive, in contexts of intergroup
warfare. For example, he advocates, “Don’t be envious” and try to benefit
from your interactions but don’t judge your success relative to others (p.
110). This contradicts balance-of-power worries: it is relative strength that
matters. He also proposes, “Don’t be the first to defect” — be nice. This
sounds good in a round-robin tournament where game players try to beat the
prisoner’s dilemma and success is measured by points won or lost. But in
warfare, an initial cooperator can be eliminated by a defector in the first
round.
To promote cooperation, Axelrod further advocates making the future
more important relative to the present. Again, this can be difficult in warfare
situations when outcomes of a confrontation can have ultimate importance
now (defeat, extinction). When he advocates a change in the payoffs of
interaction, he proposes that a central authority or power might be installed
to punish defectors. Yet, central authorities are almost never available in
warfare situations. (The United States does not even recognize the World
Court!) And when he advocates “‘teaching people to care about each other,”
he pays no attention to the realities of ethnocentrism or related biases in
mental development, channeled cognition, or bounded rationality.
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 185

Prisoner’s dilemma games, as interpreted by Axelrod, Masters (1983),

Snidal (1985), Hirschleifer (1987), and others do contribute to our under-
standing of the evolution of cooperation, but in limited ways.4 Perhaps their
greatest value lies in demonstrating why kin selection qualifies as an
evolutionarily stable strategy, why unconstrained cooperation or altruism
are extremely limited, and why the realities of warfare and balance-of-power
considerations undermine policy recommendations flowing from such work.
Proposition 8.7. Nowhere are moral paradoxes more evident than in
“just-war” traditions.
Rhetoric about limiting war or restraint in battle come in different forms
and guises in many cultures. In the Western world, moral traditions on
limiting war have their earliest roots in pre-Christian cultures. However, just-
war traditions per se owe their early development to Christian theologians
and cannonists, beginning with Augustine (400a.p.), Gratian (1100a.p.),
and Thomas Aquinas (1300a.p.). All address the original just-war question:
Is it ever justified for Christians to participate in war? More recently, just-war
thought has received input from chivalric codes and civil law. Combined with
religious morality, a broader just-war tradition now asks this question: Is it
ever justified for nations, governments, and the citizens they represent to
participate in war? The answer to these questions supposedly represents a
guide to acceptable behavior which synthesizes moral thought, the sen-
sibilities of citizens, and the requirements of politics.
The paradox in just-war traditions can be appreciated by first examining
the nature and meaning of the term moral. Many just-war theorists fail to
ponder this question. J. T. Johnson (1981, x), a theologian, is an exception:

My own understanding of the nature of moral values is that they are known
through identification with historical communities, while moral traditions
represent the continuity through time of such communal identification. This
implies that moral life means, among other things, keeping faith with such
traditions; it also requires, more fundamentally, that moral decision making be
understood as essentially historical in character, an attempt to find continuity
between present and past, and not as a historical activity of the rational mind, as
both Kantianism and Utilitarianism, the major strains, respectively, of contem-
porary theological and philosophical ethics, would hold.

Johnson’s definition of “morals” implies rules of thumb and cannons of

behavior that have evolved from communal contexts to serve the needs and
interests of cultural ethnic groups, ethnic nations, and nation-states. That
being the case, we would expect existing morals to be highly ethnocentric
rather than utilitarian.
Looking through an “ethnocentric filter,” the ideas behind the just-war
tradition (morals) are clearly self-serving. During the Middle Ages, for
186 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

example, reasons for going to war included punishing evildoers in the stead of
God or battling vestiges of the anti-Christ (Russell 1975). More recently, just
cause includes opposition to ideological enemies (communism versus capital-
ism) or the outlawing of aggression, which usually means threats to one’s
national interests. In view of such realities, Johnson (1981) argues that the
term just war is misleading. It suggests that one side is morally perfect and
that battles are fought on the premise that they involve forces of light and
darkness. But in reality, says Johnson (1981, xxxili);

the greater component of the just war tradition has always been addressed to
more mundane matters, to relative value judgments about conflicts of a nature
less than apocalyptic... There is a lesson in this for present-day apologists of war
for ideological reasons. The principal intention of just war thought is to serve as a
source for guidelines in making relative moral decisions. The era for which it is
meant to serve is history — our own time of moral grays and shadows, not the
apocalyptic time of stark light and darkness.

To imply that just-war traditions serve as guidelines for making relative

moral decisions is to imply that morals (and decisions concerning them)
oscillate, shift, or take on forms according to perceived societal needs. From
an evolutionary approach, just-war morals can be seen as cultural mecha-
nisms that rationalize shocking societal behavior. As Jones and Griesbach
(1985) observe, “many just-war theorists seem to regard war as an evil that
needs to be morally justified.”
One of the most recent and well-known attempts to rationalize just wars
has been the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (1983) paper entitled
“The Challenge of Peace.” The bishops believe their criteria for a just war
represent high moral principles designed to restrain war and promote peace.
It has been described as a doctrine and a “rational’’ theory that sets forth
moral conditions for waging and fighting wars. These are intended to apply
not just to Christians but to all individuals and nations (Jones and Griesbach
1985). However, “The Challenge of Peace” is an outgrowth of traditional
ethnocentric reasoning. It rationalizes the pursuit of national interest in the
face of balance-of-power struggles.
The six criteria in ‘““The Challenge of Peace” are

1. Competent authority: War can be waged only to serve public interest or

the common good and not private gain. Therefore, only those public
officials who have the right or duty to declare war may so declare it.
2. Just cause: War may be waged only to meet a real and grave danger. Such
danger threatens innocent human life or basic human rights.
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 187

3. Right intention: War may only be waged with the intention of meeting a
“real and grave danger.” Thus, a war may be fought only long enough to
realize just goals; a nation must avoid unnecessary brutality or engaging
in practices which would threaten the establishment of a just, lasting
peace.
4. Last resort: A war may be waged only if all peaceful means to avoid war
have been exhausted.
5. Proportionality: The destruction and evils brought on by war must be
proportionate to the just causes for which the war is fought and the goods
to be achieved by waging the war.
6. Probability of success: Except for some wars of self-defense, a just
belligerent must have likely prospects of success in waging the war.

Again, applying an ethnocentric filter to these principles, note (1) the

emphasis on serving the public interest (but whose interest?), (2) public
officials have the right or duty to declare war, and (3) a war can be fought
only long enough to realize just goals or establish a just, lasting peace (but,
whose just goals?). The idea of just-war morality to perpetuate peace is,
perhaps, most ludicrous of all. Conditions of peace must be to someone’s
liking, and in most contexts, they will exist when the national interest of
country A is accommodated regardless of what happens to country B.
Perhaps the most obvious omission in just-war thought today is its
silence on deterrence and balance-of-power processes. For example, “The
Challenge to Peace” argues that nations have a right to self-defense, but
should not initiate war. Thus, threats of warfare are ruled as being morally
unjustified. Yet, the entire process of military expenditures to maintain
deterrence involves a potential threat to adversaries. The fact is, a nation
cannot have a credible deterrence unless it has the capacity and is prepared to
employ weapons and strategies against an adversary that threatens the
deterrence process.
Some argue that having weapons does not necessarily mean intent to use.
This speaks only to the owners of the deterrence, those who know their own
intentions. It does not apply to outside targets who can only guess about
intentionality. The bottom line is that by stockpiling weapons the appearance
of intent to use those weapons is created. Thus, just-war tradition, as morality
against warfare, is incompatible with deterrence (O’Brien 1985). Perhaps this
is why it is largely mute on the subject of stockpiling arms.
On summarizing his extensive research on the consistency of just-war
thought, J. T. Johnson (1981, xxi) concludes, “No one should expect
theorists representing such different perspectives as those of the Christian
188 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

faith, law, and the military to agree completely; yet it is remarkable that a
great deal of consensus has evolved.” We would expect precisely such a
consensus. Just-war traditions, including morals involving self-defense and
aggression in warfare, are essentially ethnocentric. At best, they serve limited
reciprocity. Legislation and restraints on war such as banning poison arrows
in Roman times have parallels in the banning of chemical weapons in modern
times. Both are agreed upon to serve the mutual advantage of combatants,
but neither process has succeeded in eliminating arms races, war, or threats of
massive retaliation when national interests are at stake.
Can the just-war tradition have anything to say of moral value in a
nuclear age where a holocaust renders “‘rules of restraint” meaningless?
Several critics think not. As Stegeng (1985, 584) argues:

These critics suggest...that today’s technology and the operation of human

nature and Murphy’s Law make modern warfare essentially impossible to
control morally, that rather than straining to find ways to clean up warfare so it
can be continued...supporters of the just war tradition might better spend their
energies developing or supporting alternatives to obsolescent if not yet obsolete
warfare...

Johnson (1984, viii) battles this negative reaction to just-war thought

with the hope that humans will have the capacity to control and limit the
force available to nations “‘so as to keep it subservient to higher values and
principles.” We have no doubt that nations will keep force subservient to
values and principles — their own values and principles. At our stage of
evolution, therefore, we would ask Johnson and other just-war thinkers to
clarify what higher values and principles really are and how they can be made
operational.
Proposition 8.8. Religion has had little or no effect on reducing
warfaring propensities. Those expecting it to play a moderating role fail to
appreciate its evolutionary significance as an enabling mechanism, one that
reinforces ethnocentric sentiments.
Religious principles of universal love and altruism are often seen as
incompatible with humanity’s propensity for warfare. This is certainly
evident in contemporary, popularized versions of the Judeo-Christian ethic in
which pacifism is a central tenant. But such interpretations fail to appreciate
the role of religion as an enabling mechanism to promote well-being of in-
group members, reinforce in-group solidarity, and foster nationalism. They
also fail to understand the “situational illogic”’ of religious rhetoric in recent
history following the separation of church and state.
An informative perspective on religion and nationalism comes from
anthropological studies of primitive cultures. These clarify why religion is so
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 189

commonly present or associated with warfaring activity. First, every known

tribe has a concept involving creation and after-death myths. Though these
myths differ greatly, all serve to bridge the gap between “here and now” and
the fear of unknown futures (the afterlife). Second, great ethnocentrism is
usually attached to one’s in-group. Out-group myths are usually regarded as
fallacious, perhaps evil. Third, the major myth figure is almost always a male
with powerful, warriorlike features (as well as compassionate, loving traits
for those who honor and follow his ways). Fifth, this myth figure is almost
always invoked to assist the well-being of in-group members, to defend
against attackers, or to eliminate potentially threatening competitor groups.
Finally, the myth helps rationalize the ultimate sacrifice in war — death. The
notion that defense of one’s group and its followers will be rewarded in an
afterlife provides powerful reinforcement to the fighting spirit (see the
sections on Iranian nationalism).
The important point here is not that myths differ greatly in substance,
expression of beliefs, or interpretations they place on the world. Nor is it
important that many myths appear irrational or unfounded from an
outsider’s point of view. What is important is that they serve as a powerful
device to foster group solidarity, identity, and mobilization (Lease 1983). Just
as deity myths have much direct relevance to reproduction involving
matriage rites, contraceptive practice, pronatal policies, and birthing and
parenting rites (Reynolds and Tanner 1983), they have much direct relevance
to survival (establishing just-war criteria, the nature of “evil” competitors,
and so on).
Primitive cultures may seem worlds apart from the history of Western
civilization, but who would deny that warfaring has not been a prevalent
feature of Judaic, Christian, or Islamic traditions? The Jewish tribe of the Old
Testament waged wars under the pretext that Jews were the chosen people.
Greenspoon (1983) observes that several generations of biblical scholars
have identified the biblical God as a “Divine Warrior,” placing two distinct
themes within the larger context of holy warfare. These themes are

Theme A: The march of the Divine Warrior to battle. The Divine Warrior
marches off to war: at his wrath, nature is in upheaval, with mountains tottering
and the heavens collapsing.
Theme B: Return of the Divine Warrior to take up kingship. The Divine
Warrior, victorious over his foes, comes to his new temple on his newly won
mount. Nature responds to the victorious Divine Warrior. At the sound of his
voice all nature awakens. [Greenspoon 1983, 208]
190 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

More recently, the Christian community, one of several small sects

around 300 A.D., grew dramatically when it sided with Roman Emperor
Constantine’s warfaring exploits in 320 a.p. This ended the persecution of
the Christians, established Christianity as the preferred religion of the Roman
Empire, and signaled the Christian doctrine of the just war (Kehoe 1986).
Between 500-800 a.p., Christianity took hold as the imperial religion, and
by 800 a.p. it had mixed with the Germanic ideal to produce a warlike image
of Christ:
Christ... was being approximated to this representation of God ... terrible
and strong.... A gravestone of the Frankish period near Bonn shows Christ as
King of Heaven, with a lance in his right hand, towering over the conquered
Serpent.... The Church acquired a military and legal stamp in these centuries —
when its hierarchy was modeled after the militarized hierarchy of the Late Roman
Empire and its God after that Empire’s despotic ruler and his lesser imitators, the
barbarian kings. [Hillgarth 1969, 84-85]

Not unsimilar images apply to the prophet Mohammed. He was clearly a

soldier of God. Much of his life was devoted to raiding, plundering, and
intergroup warfare. The Koran and Islam are intolerant of threats from out-
groups.
Religion, as a mechanism for national solidarity and mobilization, is
prevalent in modern society as well. From the 1860s when Japan opened her
doors to the West and emerged from a long period of isolation, the Shinto
religion moved to the fore as the great energizer of national effort, national
mobilization for war, and self-sacrifice during warfare (Fridell 1983). In
Poland, intense nationalistic loyalty and deep Catholic identity have been
reinforcing elements in the shared political and moral values of the Poles. In
East Germany, neither the tragic experiences of the Nazi occupation, nor the
imposition of an undesired post-World War II communist regime have
weakened powerful nationalist—Catholic sentiment (Kennedy and Simon
1983). In modern Israel, the messianic desire for Jewish sovereignty is the
premodern form of Jewish nationalism. Today, secular movements strive
zealously to defend interests of core religious groups (often right-wing
groups) through Zionism with appeals to return to premodern Jewish
nationalism. And, in revolutionary Iran, xenophobic nationalism and
religious radicalism go hand in hand (Merk! 1983).
Confusion over religion, universal love, and warfare is most visibly a
Western dilemma stemming from the separation of church and state. In the
case of early Christianity, Christ’s teachings of universal love and charity
toward the poor, the sick, the outcast, and the oppressor may have been
controversial (and very different from other religions), but they still
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 191

addressed needs of in-group living. The environment Christ knew consisted

of a relatively small, ordered, ethnocentric community where the universal
love and charity he advocated spoke directly to members of this community.
Though he was crucified for his radicalism — perhaps for being too altruistic
or too great a challenge to the status quo — his teachings were relevant to
minimizing aggression and conflict within the community. It is when church
and state separated about 1800 a.p. that the real dilemma began. On the one
hand, the state continued with its just-war tradition and maximization of in-
group welfare. It also harnessed Christian ideology whenever possible to
enhance warfaring behaviors (for example, the Crusades). On the other hand,
the Church, cut off from its state foundation, began to define a new
community. Over time, membership of that community crossed state
boundaries, implying that “universal love,” which had evolved to serve the
universe of in-group state members, now applied across groups.
In applying Christ’s teachings, a major incompatibility arose. For
example, Christ advocated that we bless those who curse us, pray for those
who abuse us, offer the other cheek to the one who strikes us, give our coat to
the one who steals our cloak, and refrain from reclaiming goods that have
been taken from us (Luke 6:27—30). This teaching is hardly compatible with
allegiance to the state, the provider of in-group priorities of survival and
reproduction. Indeed, to indiscriminately embrace one’s enemies (for exam-
ple members of competitor states) and give up resources could end in one’s
extinction.
A similar point applies to Christ’s call for charity toward the poor. When
state and church were together, charity for the poor promised to increase in-
group welfare (reduce death rates, malnutrition, chances of internal revolt,
and so on). Now, with church and state separate, Christ’s teachings of charity
imply altruism beyond group boundaries. Again, indiscriminate adherence to
such dictums could mean biological suicide for its practitioners, especially if
recipients are potential enemies whose relative strength is fortified by such
charity.
The dilemma then, concerns allegiances to that entity which provides
best for one’s survival and reproduction. When religion served solely to help
communities/states maximize such ends, few dilemmas arose between
religion and intergroup conflict. Just-war traditions prospered, religious
ethnocentrism and nationalism dominated, and individual psyches remained
relatively at ease (J. T. Johnson 1981). Now, with formal religion adrift in
many societies, its dictums apply to new, ethereal group boundaries without a
clear geographical membership. As a result, religion is completely inept at
preventing warfare. It continues to be harnessed successfully to foster just-
192 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

war traditions in many societies, and religions themselves have entered a new
era of secularism and “spiritual” infighting (Fowler 1985).
Proposition 8.9. An evolutionary theory of nationalism, patriotism and
humanity’s propensity for warfare does not advocate the innateness or
inevitability of it all.
No matter how much we strive to represent our theory as an outcome of
gene—culture coevolution, there will be readers eager to classify it as “nature”
or biological determinism. Perhaps this is due to some failure on our part to
be sufficiently explicit. Perhaps it is due to humanity’s propensity to classify
in binary fashion (chapter 4). Are our reader’s minds “naturally” working
overtime to force our theory into a nature versus nurture category? Or,
perhaps is it due to ideological blinders and biases? Some people just refuse to
let go of the ridiculous notion that humans are exempt from the insights of
evolutionary biology and that such insights are relevant only to understand-
ing lower organisms, not Homo sapiens.
When readers erroneously classify our work as nature, they also tend to
imply that we are somehow advocating the innateness or inevitability of
humanity’s propensity for warfare. For example, on presenting our theory at
an invited lecture we were given a “Statement on Violence” by a member of
the audience. In the mind of its bearer, the “Statement on Violence”
challenged our position. It had been prepared by 17 scientists affiliated with
established universities or research institutions in more than 10 countries.
Published in the little known Journal of World Education in 1987, the
“Statement on Violence” has five principles. They are
1. Principle 1: It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have inherited a
tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. Warfare is a peculiarly
human phenomenon and does not occur in other animals.
2. Principle 2: It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent
behavior is genetically programmed into our human nature. While genes are
involved at all levels of nervous system function, they provide a developmen-
tal potential that can be actualized only in conjunction with the ecological
and social environment. Except for rare pathologies, genes per se do not
produce individuals necessarily predisposed to violence.
3. Principle 3: It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human
evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for
other kinds of behavior.
4. Principle 4: It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans have a “violent
brain.”” While we do have the neural apparatus to act violently; it is not
automatically activated by internal or external stimuli. How we act is shaped
by how we have been conditioned and socialized. There is nothing in our
neurophysiology that compels us to react violently.
5. Principle 5: It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is caused by instinct or
any single motivation. The emergence of modern warfare has been a journey
On Biases, Blinders, and Dead Ends 193

from the primacy of emotional and motivational factors, sometimes called

instincts, to the primacy of cognitive factors.

Signatories of these principles perceive that theories of evolution have

been used to justify not only war but genocide, colonialism, and suppression
of the weak as well. They are speaking, of course, of maligned policies
propagated by Nazis toward Jews in World War II, survival-of-the-fittest
bigotry as applied to the less fortunate, and so on, all of which claimed some
legitimacy in social Darwinism as advocated by Herbert Spencer.
Our reaction to the “Statement on Violence” is that we largely agree with
it —all five principles. Yes, it is a good idea to emphasize that war per se is not
inherited from animals. It is an intergroup phenomenon unique to humans.
Yes, it is essential to stress (1) that assumptions claiming a gene per se for
warfare are scientifically unfounded, (2) that selection for aggressive
behaviors over, say, cooperative behavior cannot be absolutely proven, (3)
that humans do not have an innately violent brain, one that rampages on cue
or out of control, and (4) that war is not caused by instinct or any single one
motivation. But in correctly challenging these myths, it is essential to avoid
swinging to the opposite extreme. For example, signatories of the “Statement
on Violence” argue “The fact that warfare has changed so radically over time
indicates that it is a product of culture. Its biological connection is primarily
through language which makes possible the coordination of groups, the
transmission of technology and use of tools.”
On the one hand, the “Statement on Violence”’ correctly repudiates genes
per se for warfare, violent brains, and instincts; but on the other hand, it
incorrectly and unscientifically advocates the primacy of a cultural inter-
pretation of warfare. The problem here is all too familiar. When a strictly
nature interpretation is repudiated, a strictly nurture interpretation seems to
emerge as the only alternative. What gets pushed aside is a marriage of the
two, or rather, the scientific study of the interactions between genetic
behavioral strategies (that is, inclusive fitness rather than a gene for a specific
behavior) and culture. Inevitably, science suffers, perhaps because propo-
nents of the either/or debate are not sufficiently familiar with biology,
psychology, and sociology to undertake an interdisciplinary approach.
Because the ‘“‘Statement on Violence” does not chart out a middle
ground, it comes up empty handed when advocating a way out of warfare in
the nuclear age. All that its signatories are able to recommend is a change in
individual consciousness (not how it can be accomplished). To this end, they
cite a familiar UNESCO dictum: “Just as war begins in the minds of men,
peace must also begin in the minds of men” (sic). We agree with their final
recommendation: “The same species that invented war is capable of
194 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

inventing peace; the responsibility lies with each of us.” But we want
understanding of how to do so.
At the very least, our theory postulates processes by which evolutionary
biology, neurophysiology, cognition, environment, and culture have inter-
acted to overwhelmingly shape and motivate minds to invent and perpetrate
war, not peace. We thus lay steps to meaningfully decode functions, costs—
benefits, and perceived utilities of warfaring propensities. These are the
internal elements of humanity’s propensity for warfare that require modifica-
tion. Targeting war without tackling the underlying propensities is like
beginning a race from the finish line.

NOTES

1. This is not to say that the military—industrial complex does not participate in ongoing
arms races with great clout and legitimacy. It does so because so many citizens — military
industry personnel, academicians, inventors of new technologies, and the media specialists —
rely on employment and income from such activity.
2. See also the evidence summarized in chapter 3 of Otterbein (1968) on the correlation
between patrilocal residence and warfare.
3. More precisely, Axelrod’s experiments are not with human subjects or groups but,
rather, involve computer simulations and statistical/logical decision making among “‘actors”
programmed with a given range of behaviors and choices.
4. Prisoners’ dilemma games have several additional shortcomings. Axelrod draws
attention to the requirement that payoffs have to be known in advance for a strategy such as tit-
for-tat to evolve as a cooperative strategy. This implies almost perfect information on the costs—
benefits involved, risks of incurring them, etc. Hirschleifer (1987) draws attention to the
possibility that players lack the ability to reason strategically (that is, to conceptualize that “ifI
do this, then he will do that, in which case I would respond by ....”). He goes on to point out that a
round-robin tournament where tit-for-tat emerged as an optimal reciprocal strategy is a very
special type of contest. In many circumstances, particularly if we are thinking of evolutionary
selection, the competition among strategies might be better characterized by an elimination
tournament. “Tit-for-tat would do very badly in elimination tournaments, since it rarely if ever
can defeat any other strategy in a one-on-one encounter” (Hirschleifer 1987, 349).
CHAPTER 9 .

The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have

a Chance?
What we seek, when we think of world peace and world law, has no precedent in
the history of life, not to say that of “humankind.” (Richard Alexander 1982]
What can and should educators and teachers do so that their activity serves the
cause of peace?... we must educate a new Homo sapiens. [Bogdaw Suchodolski
1987]

INTRODUCTION

The ultimate purpose of understanding war is to prevent it. Yet, progress in

understanding or controlling humanity’s propensity for attack and defense
has been painfully slow (Brodie 1972; Knorr 1977; Singer 1981). Existing
theory on the subject is moribund; only a small gain in explanatory power has
come from the large amount of work done, and the necessary or sufficient
conditions for the occurrence of war are still unknown (Waltz 1975;
Simowitz and Price 1986).
Nor has rhetoric for disarmament and peace had any appreciable effect
on the frequency of organized lethal conflict during the last 150 years. The
Kellogg—Briand Pact of 1928 is an example par excellence. Heralded as “the
highest expression of hope in interwar diplomacy,” it became the first
attempt to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy (Debenedetti
1972). Signed by 60-odd nations, its principles have endured and are now
embodied in the United Nations charter. Yet, its utility as an enforcement
device has been zero. Only 3 years after its inception, the pact was violated.
By 1942, the world was again embroiled in a global war. The Kellogg—Briand
Pact, like Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT) today, merely
advanced antiwar rhetoric at the international level with no visible impact on
subsequent global or regional conflict (Epstein 1984).
196 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

As Singer (1979) concluded from his massive Correlates of War project,

we are left with a system that is fundamentally as war prone as it has been
since the Congress of Vienna. Nor are there convincing signs that humanity is
truly motivated to alter its militaristic course. Nations of the world have
taken few significant steps to limit nuclear proliferation, global military
expenditures, or the expansion of an international arms trade (Sivard 1979;
von Weizsacker 1980b). As for peace movements, they have been largely
impotent. Historically, they have followed a pattern of enthusiasm and
growth, impasse and apathy, and a general decline into political ineffective-
ness (Howlett and Zeitzer 1985).
Acknowledging solid grounds for pessimism, can we possibly say
anything of policy relevance that has not been said before? Our answer is a
qualified yes. On the one hand, our theory embodies variables and processes
that provide a new “window” for interpreting and understanding warfaring
propensities. Understanding a problem is the most essential requisite to
solving it. On the other hand, our theory can be used to shed light on why so
many attempts to reduce warfaring propensities have not worked. This
applies to coups d’état in Africa, civil wars, conventional warfare, and the
imminent danger of nuclear war. By failing to recognize potent covert
processes, many ongoing peace processes have been rendered impotent.
FIGURE 9.1. The urgency of anew approach.
THE FAILURES THE URGENCY THE IMPLICATION

Top-down policies aes aanGarhew

Bottom-up movements Loach approach
annihilation required
Initiatives to change
thinking

The first part of this chapter reviews three traditional policy approaches
to reducing warfare and/or superpower confrontation. These are sche-
matized in Figure 9.1. Although quite different from each other, these
approaches have two things in common — they are largely superficial and
involve little sacrifice (pecuniary or non-pecuniary) to their advocates
(legislators or citizens). They are superficial because they ignore the ultimate
causes of humanity’s propensity for warfare and, consequently, attack the
wrong targets. Moreover, they often work at cross-purposes, hence failing to
generate sustained, synergistic effects. They involve little sacrifice’ because
superficial understanding of problems tends to produce superficial efforts to
overcome them. These considerations argue for the urgency of a new
approach.
What must a new approach incorporate to defuse the ultimate causes of
war? Most certainly, traditional approaches would require radical redesign
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 197

and redirection to impact on warfaring propensities. The second part of this

chapter proposes how, only to concede that hopes for “‘radical action” would
require unprecedented faith in the power of free will. Humans have outfoxed
themselves. They have learned to maximize inclusive fitness — through
ethnocentrism, out-group enmity, nationalism and patriotism — to the
extent they have created the means to destroy the very inclusive fitness they
seek to foster and protect. Our theory does not chart an easy way out. Yet,
unless some kind of action is forthcoming along the lines proposed, there is no
reason to believe that Homo sapiens will escape nuclear devastation, if not
extinction.

TRADITIONAL APPROACHES

Top-Down Policies

Top-down policies take two forms. One involves action by a centralized,

world authority to reduce war and nuclear confrontation. The United
Nations is an example. The other involves unprecedented action by the
government of a world power to promote peace, perhaps in the form of a
nuclear freeze or reduction in arms. The most reassuring example would
likely involve action by the United States or the USSR. Realities of both
examples signify paralysis.
That efforts to halt or slow the nuclear arms race have suffered severe
setbacks during the last 5 years is known too well in the corridors of the
United Nations. Failure of the U.N. to achieve nuclear disarmament has
prompted U.N. researchers to call for a serious appraisal of its strategies.
Epstein (1984), a senior fellow of the U.N. Institute for Training and
Research (UNITAR), asks why major governments have stubbornly followed
a path they see as essential to national survival and security while, in the view
of disarmament advocates, it points to the extinction of humankind?
Ironically, part of the answer to Epstein’s query is built into the United
Nation’s charter itself. The charter recognizes sovereign equality of all its
member states, including their right to self-determination. In translating this,
nations bring their national interests, not interests of world peace, to U.N.
bartering tables. Nowhere is this more apparent than in limits of authority
bestowed upon the U.N. Security Council or U.N. peacekeeping forces. In
July 1987, for example, members of the U.N. Security Council voted
unanimously to bring the 7-year Iran-Iraq war to a halt. Iran finally agreed to
it — a year later — but only when total exhaustion, a drying up of resources,
198 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

and naval pressure from a contingent of Western powers caused the

government to knucle under.
As regards U.N. peacekeeping forces, they do not have the right to
intervene or halt a war unless invited to do so by all participants. National
interests, and national interests alone, have the final say as to whether
priorities of world peace (as interpreted by U.N. bodies) can be implemented
in a country. As critics point out, if but one nuclear power perceives its
national interest at odds with world peace priorities, all other nuclear powers
must stand on guard.
How, then, might national interests be brought into line with world
peace priorities? It must begin with an understanding of the evolutionary
processes which have shaped national interests. It also requires full attention
to the importance of nucleus and cultural ethnicity and how these are
mobilized by the identification mechanism for warfare. Even the obvious
bearing of cultural ethnicity on national consciousness, nationhood, and
conflict between nations is conspicuously absent in the United Nations
charter. Indeed, by building “national interests” into the charter, the U.N.
legitimizes nationalism and patriotism, the very vehicles of warfare mobiliza-
tion in contemporary society.
The second top-down strategy relies on the scenario in which a major
contender in the arms race is assumed to initiate a radical peace plan. A
superpower, for example, might seize a moment ripe for change, perhaps
implementing unilateral cuts in the nuclear arsenal. Alternatively, it might
impose a freeze on the deployment of weapons deemed by adversaries to be
particularly useful for a first strike. The initiator’s counterpart would then be
expected to reciprocate. In reviewing this type of scenario, Blight (1986), a
psychologist of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard
University, asks whether we should reasonably expect such processes to lead
to the desired results. His answer is we should not; there is simply no
precedent for such action and no reason to suppose a new precedent will be
set.
Deutsch (1983, 23) disagrees, arguing that superpower “psychopathol-
ogy” could eventually be eliminated if only “a bold and courageous American
leadership would take a risk for peace [and] announce its determination to
end the crazy arms race.” But consider the case when President Kennedy
announced in June, 1963 that the United States would thereafter forego
atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons as long as other nuclear powers such
as the USSR and United Kingdom did likewise. Rogers (1982), a psychologist,
has argued that this bold move, combined with the Limited Test Ban Treaty
which followed, is a prototype of the sort of process needed to begin a cure for
the “pathological” superpower relationship. Yet, as Blight (1986) points out,
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 199
.

the one event which probably increased receptivity to the atmospheric test
ban — the terrifying Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962 — was also,
paradoxically, a significant catalyst for the massive Soviet nuclear arms
buildup that, a generation later, continues unabated (Trachtenberg 1985).

Similarly, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in

1988, follows on the heels of the largest “‘peace-time”’ military buildup ever by
the USA and USSR. Yet, almost immediately, it gave rise to new tactics to increase
and redeploy nuclear submarine forces to compensate for the limitation of
intermediate land-based missiles. And, with the continued absence of an Anti-
Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, both countries are rapidly shifting resources to
Strategic Defense Initiatives (SDI), popularly known as “Star Wars”’.

Why superpower animosity has proven so prevalent has eluded analysts

who advocate the power of cultural manipulation as a means of insuring
change. But from an evolutionary perspective, conflicting ideologies of the
United States and USSR serve ultimate national interests. They are classic
players of balance-of-power strategies. Most important, their ethnocentric
citizens are driven by an identification mechanism which mobilizes them,
under nationalistic and patriotic banners, for warfare. As such, they tend to
view domestic grass-roots peace movements with suspicion (the United
States) and antagonism (the USSR).
Both variants of the top-down approach are ineffective because ultimate
causes are not addressed. A key premise of the United Nations charter
prevents any attempt to tackle nationalism and patriotism as devices for
warfare mobilization. The superpowers remain locked in a balance-of-power
context, perceiving that threats of war originate solely from the other side
while allowing their own propensity for warfare to run unchecked.

Bottom-Up Approaches

Bottom-up or grass-roots approaches are best illustrated by popular peace

movements that involve the mobilization of everyday citizens. “People
power” seeks effectiveness where political processes have proven sterile.
Peace movements are varied and diverse, but those concerned with nuclear
threats are usually expressed through mass marches, demonstrations,
political lobbying, and nuclear freeze proposals (Boulding 1984).
Blight (1986, 630) offers a particularly negative assessment of the impact
of such movements on international tensions: “There is absolutely no
evidence that grass-roots movements in the nuclear age have had the slightest
impact on the direction and intensity of nuclear arms competition.” For
200 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

example, the nuclear freeze movement began with great enthusiasm early in
the 1980s, only to pass into rapid demise without mustering anything that
resembled even a partial freeze (Klare 1985). Blumenfeld (1985, 44), himself
sympathetic to radical nuclear politics, concedes that “The peace movement
has had no visible impact on the scale or speed of the arms race.””!
Why do they fail? On a surface level, the most frequently cited reasons
include inadequate funding, the volunteer status of most participants, and
factionalism within the ranks of the peace movement itself. Factionalism
stems from disputes over ideology or agenda. It also arises because there is no
institutional control of entry into leadership. Without legitimation of
leadership, spokespersons of peace movements do not have the institutional
credibility of, say, an elected political party official (for example, a U.S.
senator). Indeed, they are often denied access to more legitimate, institu-
tionalized representatives of the people.
On a somewhat deeper level, the failure of peace movements can be
traced to their emotional appeal at the expense of rational, objective goals.
Not only do peace movements seldom prescribe clear, realistic steps to
disarmament (Wehr 1986), they also fail to recognize the dilemma they create
for citizens. A peculiar feature of peace movements — as distinct from social
movements in general — is that its emotive rhetoric tries to move citizens to
do things of international consequence. For example, a nuclear freeze may
increase the peace of mind of its proponents, on the one hand, while reducing
the security of the nation per se on the other. In doing so, it upsets the balance-
of-power criteria in international affairs without providing a viable alterna-
tive. This paradox separates peace movements from other successful social
movements that benefit members of the in-group alone, such as the women’s
movement or civil liberties actions.
As Clotfelter (1986) observes, peace movements are undermined because
citizens believe their nation’s actions should be contingent on actions of the
other nations (a balance-of-power consideration). Indeed, unconstrained
peace offerings are interpreted by conservative elements of the population as
dangerous, as fostering behavior that will benefit national adversaries. This is
one reason why peace advocates in the West are often viewed with suspicion,
as unpatriotic, or as tools of communism or left-oriented factions (Kagan
1985; Krasner and Peterson 1986). It is also one reason why peace
movements in the Eastern bloc are of limited visibility, if not officially
repressed (Taagepera 1986; Hall 1986).
A cliche about peace movements today is that “they are going through a
transition period of reflection and maturation.” Fear is no longer perceived to
bea sufficient motivator. Tyler and McGraw (1983) and Feshback and White
(1986) draw on survey results to conclude that attempts to emphasize the
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 201

horrific aspects of nuclear war will be largely ineffective in increasing support

and mobilization for nuclear disarmament. Fear, as the motivator, must be
replaced by a more solid understanding and prognosis. Furthermore, the
platform and constituency of peace movements must also be broadened to
represent the population as a whole.2
None of the above reasons for failure comes as a surprise. Peace, as
advocated by grass-roots movements, is largely a rhetorical idea, a “wish”
that costs little to formulate. Most peace marches, for example, are
conducted on weekends when individuals have free time. What would the
turnout be like were individuals required to take a day off work? Most peace
movements have little funding because participants are unwilling to contrib-
ute much. And, most peace movement ideologies fail to alter the way we think
because they do not reflect the basic values of society. They attempt to
exchange one way of thinking for another without understanding why a
particular way of thinking has become entrenched in our cognitive and
emotive makeup. Indeed, emotional pleas for peace in most nations are often
at odds with our most widely shared attachments and most treasured
symbols, those associated with nationalism and patriotism (Clotfelter 1986).
In short, peace movements tend to attack the wrong targets. In Western
societies, they tend to attack specific politicians or parties, the military—
industrial complex, or various war-mongering suspects. Even if some of these
attacks are justified, they address surface manifestations of warfaring
propensities. Furthermore, such attacks often place the peace movement at
odds with other approaches, thereby sidetracking possibilities for coordi-
nated peace efforts.

Initiatives to Change Thinking

Well aware of the destructive capacity of human technology, Albert Einstein

said, ‘““The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our
modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalled catastrophe ... a new
type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive” (cited in Holt 1984,
199-200). Einstein was convinced that psychological variables are at the core
of humanity’s propensity for warfare and that “global thinking” rather than
“nationalistic thinking” could prevent war. Acting on his conviction, he
solicited help from Sigmund Freud to devise a psychological strategy that
would usher in global thinking. In an exchange published by Einstein and
Freud (1966), Freud responded that he knew of no way psychology could
make any direct contribution to reducing warfaring propensities.
Einstein’s challenge has haunted psychologists for years. Regrettably,
resulting research and psychological insights on the problems of warfare have
202 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

not refuted Freud’s pessimism. Blight (1986, 691), a psychologist, draws on

several sources, including a Rand survey of behavioral research on nuclear
war and a Carnegie Corporation conference (1984) on the same subject to
conclude, “Behavioral scientists, whatever they may know, have made no
headway at all in altering the process of foreign policy-making.”
For Blight, the most compelling reason that foreign policymakers ignore
behavioral research is that the assumptions and modus operandi of psychol-
ogy and psychiatry are pure idealism. One school of thought, for example,
assumes that behavioral research can change the mental structures of
important world leaders. To do so in fundamental ways, it advocates a shift
from a parochial to a more global perspective. Once accomplished, the ‘““deep
psychopathology” of nuclear deterrence and potential war would be
presumably cured and the arms race terminated. Advocates of this view
believe the psychopathology driving the arms race is one of personal
cognition — among world leaders.
The implied solution to deep psychopathology is not fundamentally
different in kind from the psychotherapeutic process required to cure any sort
of psychological illness involving thought disorders (Blight 1986, 627).
Needless to say, this interpretation differs greatly from the psychological
underpinnings discussed in chapters 4 and 5. ““Deep”’ psychological causes
from a behavioral psychology perspective are not “deep” psychological
causes from an evolutionary perspective. If anything, they represent a surface
diagnosis.
Another school of behaviorist thought, the “interactionists,” argue that
there is no evidence to suggest the presence of widespread pathology in the
cognition of superpower leaders. Rather, they argue that the deep psycho-
pathology is more abstract, embodied in a pathological relationship between
two countries.
Within what nuclear depth psychologists take to be crazy patterns of
interaction between the superpowers, especially institutionalized mistrust and
assumptions of ubiquitous hostile intent, the leaders are seen as functioning quite
rationally, as a rule, and one of the forms taken by their rational adaptation to a
crazy system is participation in the nuclear arms race. [Blight 1986, 627]

We are more inclined to agree with the interactionist school and their
emphasis on a pathological relationship between states. But they need to go
deeper in their efforts to examine the underlying causes of this pathology. In
other words, an evolutionary perspective is needed.
If behavioral researchers are on shaky ground in their approach to
nuclear conflict, then “new world society” advocates are on even shakier
ground. The new world society paradigm — another global concept — is
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 203

essentially psychological because it advocates rethinking processes of crisis

prevention and resolution, use of subnational community participation in
problem-solving workshops, rethinking terrorism and national foreign
policy behavior, and so on (Banks 1984). However, the new world society
paradigm is extremely vague and without precedent. Nor does it convincingly
demonstrate its theoretical and practical superiority over other potential
approaches. There are no good reasons to assume that nationalistic and
patriotic thinking will or should change to allow allegiances beyond national
borders. And, it incorporates no proposals to systematically involve individ-
uals of all societies. Rather, it entails (1) crude notions that incorrect
perceptions of others exacerbate conflict and (2) unfounded promises that
increased interactions of a friendly nature will reduce antagonisms (Ford
1986). As such, it presents a naive, unpromising approach to deciphering and
defusing warfaring propensities in a nuclear age, one which ignores
evolutionary underpinnings of nationalistic and patriotic behaviors.
Perhaps a more promising strategy to change thinking is through formal
education. On the positive side, formal education can be used as a policy tool
to speak to individuals in their formative stages (children and young adults)
regardless of sex, ethnic origin, parental wealth, and country of residence.
Also positive is a mass of evidence showing that as individuals progress to
higher levels of education, they are more receptive to new ideas, more prone
to question the legitimacy of ideologies, and more apt to debate alternatives
to war.
Conversely, formal education can be used as a policy tool both to
indoctrinate ethnocentrism and out-group enmity and to wage a cold war.
Many studies show that educational content is anything but neutral with
regard to out-groups (Taylor 1981). This is particularly so in some ethnic
schools where Perlmutter (1981) observes “the teaching of contempt” for
out-groups. Also negative from a global perspective are findings that highly
educated individuals are just as likely to support nationalistic/patriotic ideals
as are less-educated individuals. For example, a New York Times survey in
July, 1987, reported that U.S. Colonel Oliver North’s covert actions
supporting insurgent Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua were acceptable to a
majority of college-educated respondents. Indeed, high levels of national
education tend to have no effect on reducing the armament expenditures of
the wealthiest countries.
Educational programs can influence receptivity to new ideas as long as
those ideas do not go against inclusive-fitness-based nationalism, patriotism,
and national interests. When they do, they are not likely to be effective.
Indeed, because “peace education” often does attempt to take on these sacred
cows, few institutions sponsor courses in peace education and, when they do,
204 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

few individuals register for them (Boulding 1984). To reduce the nuclear
threat, educators would have to be armed with a sufficient understanding of
humanity’s propensity for warfare. They would also have to be realistic in
order to develop curricula not at odds with national interests. And such a
curricula would have to be holistically integrated at all levels of the
educational and schooling process, not marginalized into a single or one-time
course as is common today.

A NEW APPROACH?

Our theory has two fundamental implications for reducing future conflict.
First, it is essential .to-focus on.the real.target — humanity’s. propensity for
warfare. Second, it is essential to recognize that Homo.sapiens have evolved
as successful inclusive.fitness-maximizers. Policy initiatives must utilize this
evolutionary trait rather than oppose it. Recognizing that another book
would be required to develop these implications fully, let us ask what a new
approach would have to incorporate to defuse the ultimate causes of war.
At the very least, elements that feed the continuum of humanity’s
ropensity for warfare would have to be decoded and widely acknowledged.
o deal with the threat of nuclear war, for example, we would have to deal
ith nationalism, patriotism, and humanity’s propensity for group loyalty
(sociological bonding). To deal with these we would have to understand the
processes in the identification mechanism (psychological states) which
covertly and continuously operate in environments shaped by balance-of-
power considerations. Finally, to deal with the identification mechanism, we
would have to examine our inclusive fitness concerns.
The continuum of warfaring propensities would then have to become the
new target of the three traditional policy approaches in Figure 9.1. In the top-
down approach, for example, the United Nations would have to deal with the
notion of national interest. National interest could no longer be taken for
granted as positive and legitimate. It would be necessary to differentiate
between national interests with positive implications for peace and those with
negative implications. The former nurtures communities without aggression
and enmity toward out-groups. The latter promotes in-group welfare and
prosperity at the expense of out-groups. Differentiating these two represents
a formidable intellectual and policy challenge, one that would have far-
reaching consequences for the United Nations as a peace body.
With respect to the second variant of the top-down approach, super-
power peace initiatives, our theory implies that superpowers would have to
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 205

acknowledge that threats of nuclear annihilation emanate from both sides.

That is, there is as much to fear from oneself as there is from others. Were
both sides convinced that threats of species annihilation originated equally
from within and without, superpower negotiations could not help but be
conducted in a qualitatively altered environment.
How might a bottom-up approach benefit by this new focus? Instead of a
plethora of shifting and parochial platforms, peace movements would have to
cooperate to target humanity’s propensity for warfare as the ultimate
obstacle to peace. This would have several beneficial effects. First, problems
of factionalism and lack of leadership structure in current peace movements
would be greatly mitigated because a new, single focus would help eliminate
disputes over agenda. It would also bring scientific discipline to the structure
of peace movements and their objectives. Second, a common focus would
facilitate the internationalization of peace movements. Implicit in this new
focus would be the recognition that no single organization, society, or nation
is solely responsible for warfaring propensities. Each and every one of us,
regardless of cultural, geographic, and national background, would have to
accept ultimate responsibility.
In terms of initiatives to change thinking, the implications of our theory
are obvious. What needs highlighting is that once educational programs were
to acknowledge humanity’s propensity for warfare, superficial teachings or
utopian schemes would be seen for what they are. Moreover, realistic
initiatives would be required to truncate or redirect the continuum of
humanity’s propensity for warfare without taking on the impossible task of
eradicating all of its elements (more on this later).
Were traditional policy approaches refocused as suggested, they would
reinforce one another. Top-down approaches would merit widespread
support and legitimation from bottom-up approaches. The latter, in turn,
would likely qualify for financial support and backing from state govern-
ments and international organizations as they supplemented top-down
approaches at grass-roots levels. Initiatives to change thinking, when
refocused, could also contribute decisively to effectiveness of both top-down
and bottom-up approaches. Combined, a synergism might take place,
whereby efforts toward a more lasting peace might be sustained.
Another implication of our theory is that Homo sapiens have evolved as
efficient inclusive fitness maximizers. Thus, while giving rise to behaviors
which currently threaten species annihilation, maximization of inclusive
fitness is also, ironically, a building block for hope. By counting on ourselves
to be incorrigible inclusive fitness maximizers and by employing our ability to
reflect and plan ahead, it might be possible to convince ourselves that
humanity’s current situation threatens inclusive fitness maximization. To do
206 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

so would require the ability to “see” that nationalistic and patriotic

sentiments, which have evolved to foster and protect inclusive fitness, now
threaten inclusive fitness in a world of belligerent nuclear powers. This, in
turn, would require that inclusive fitness be uncoupled from nationalism/
patriotism.
Given the realities of balance-of-power struggles and the entrenched
commitments to nationalism, the uncoupling process could hardly be
accomplished by new world societies or a “world” government. It would
have to operate within the international state system. Uncoupling would have
to begin by eliminating ultimately self-destructive characteristics which
emerge as by-products of the identification mechanism (for example, the
reification of out-groups as evil empires) and by facilitating in-group
cohesion as well as.aspects of nationalism without promoting out-group
enmity. This would require inverting the process whereby love for one’s
family and relatives, currently expressed through nationalism, has led to
hating and killing the loved ones of others. The inversion process would
demand bold action to prevent the evolved products of inclusive fitness
maximization from destroying inclusive fitness in a nuclear world.
Finally, the perception that nationalism and patriotism are apt to lead to
species annihilation in a nuclear age would have to be entrenched in
humanity’s consciousness. Only then might our evolutionary trait as
inclusive fitness maximizers be called upon to uncouple nationalism/
patriotism from inclusive fitness priorities. This would require no less than
the injection of a “new element” into humanity’s environment. The new
element would have to remind us constantly that when inclusive fitness
maximization is promoted through ethnocentrism, out-group enmity,
nationalism, and patriotism, the destruction of the very inclusive fitness we
seek to foster and protect becomes imminent.
Presumably, this new element could be utilized by the three traditional
policy approaches. Two implications of our theory would thus become
complementary in the policy domain. The first would establish a common
target for policy action and initiatives. The second would provide the
ultimate motivation to pursue peace initiatives. Priorities of inclusive fitness
maximization are the only ultimate motivation that could move us suffi-
ciently in this direction.

ENTER REALITY
The new approach described previously is a hopeful social mutation. Like
many approaches we have criticized, it has no precedent in human evolution
and runs into formidable opposition. —
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 207

In the very broadest sense, any hope for a lasting peace would require the
end of the social world as we know it. As Claude Phillips, a political scientist,
puts it, “Gaps between the rich and poor (individuals, ethnic groups, and
states) would have to be eliminated because the disadvantaged would never
agree to a situation in which they give up the option of fighting for a better
life. Religious and political absolutism (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish,
Hindu, communist, reactionary, or ethnic) would have to change to
toleration. All cultures would have to be treated as equally valid, in fact the
we/they dichotomy [in-group amity verus out-group enmity] would have to
cease. State boundaries could no longer be important, and so on. At this stage
of evolution, attaining lasting peace would require an animal that is not what
humans are.”’3
Equally troublesome is that to neutralize warfaring propensities, people
must be asked to voluntarily change from what they have always been. This
denies that humanity’s propensity for warfare is the outcome of thousands of
years of evolution during which cognition and intolerance of out-group
members have been shaped by priorities of gene—culture coevolution. To
assume people would (or could) voluntarily reverse these processes implies
naive faith in the power of free will. It also assumes that human nature could
be redirected in record time by social manipulation — an assumption at odds
with our theory.
To add insult to injury, some world leaders do not even consider
evolution, let alone inclusive fitness, a valid theory. Indeed, millions of
Americans have succeeded in banning the awareness of evolution from
schools. This signifies that an evolutionary perspective, as developed here,
might even be barred as a meaningful political argument against warfare.
Yet, it is also true that more and more people are willing to ponder
alternative modes of social living. Fears of nuclear annihilation have been
great motivators in this respect. For example, since World War II, and
particularly after the Vietnam War, local chapters of national U.S. peace
organizations have grown rapidly to clarify concepts and costs of war
(Boulding 1984). Though the material they prepare and disseminate is
superficial from an evolutionary viewpoint, and while their audience
represents a tiny proportion of the population, they show one promising
prospect. Unlike peace movements of the past, they are increasingly
populated by professionals with solid training and influential careers in law,
medicine, finance, the natural and social sciences, and higher education. This
is the kind of audience likely to appreciate the complexities of humanity’s
propensity for warfare and be willing to expend effort to understand it.
There are also indications that central governments are willing to provide
more financing for peace research. For example, between 1935-1970, the
208 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

U.S. government may have rejected 140 bills to offset the Department of War
with a Department of Peace, but a national Peace Institute has finally been
established. Funding is on the order of 16—20 million dollars (Kagan 1985).
The Canadian government followed suit with its Canadian Institute for
International Peace and Security.
Finally, the United Nations, convinced of the sterility of past approaches
to peace, has embraced a new concept and is looking for ways to give it
meaning. Initiated by Poland, it began in 1978 with a General Assembly
resolution entitled “Declaration on the Preparation of Societies for Life in
Peace.” This resolution advocates the inherent right of every human being to
live in peace and calls on all states to prepare their societies for life in peace.
Between 1978 and 1987, the United Nations has sponsored expert panels to
flesh out what this means. The experts agree on three points (Bulletin of Peace
Proposals 1987). First, rhetorical pleas for peace, doomsday scenarios, and
condemnation of arms race expenditures have not been sufficient to motivate
states to prepare for lasting peace. Rather, causes of warfare must be
deciphered so as to understand why peace has been so illusive. Second, a truly
monumental effort involving educational processes and teaching methods,
professionals of all fields, minorities, women, and youth must be actively
used to stem aggression and eliminate all practices of colonialism, racism,
hostility, hatred, prejudice and warfare. Such efforts must, however, be
preceded by objective knowledge as to how these behaviors have come about
and are perpetuated. Third, nothing less than an umbrella approach would
have to be established, consisting of acommon goal and underpinnings which
are (1) familiar and acceptable to all nation-states and (2) sufficient to
motivate societies to prepare for lasting peace.

IS THERE A WAY OUT?

We repeat, humans have outfoxed themselves. They have created the means
to destroy the very inclusive fitness. they-seek-to-foster.and_ protect. Peace is
not around the corner, nor is it in sight. As-Young (1987; 348) puts. it, “If170
years of peace activity by concerned citizens and publics, 40 years of the UN,
30 years of peace research, and 15 years of peace studies all share one. thing in
common, it is that this human_project hasn’t had an easy birth. ...”
What do we propose? We would like to propose some form.of world
government, some management force that might stabilize the most immedi-
ate threat to-humanity—nuclear destruction: Given the power-of.in-group
amity/out-growth enmity, however, such a government would likely have to
The Policy Frontier: Does Peace Have a Chance? 209

be a conquest state, at least over the next few generations. For example, both
the United States and the USSR have nuclear capabilities, and neither could
take the action required for.a world state for fear of initiating military
retaliation from.the other.
And the United Nations? It is criticized and berated for its failure to end
wars and put a stop to the nuclear arms race. Yet even its harshest critics
concede it is the only international forum:the world has. In its quest to
understand war, will the United Nations focus on ultimate causes of
humanity’s propensity for warfare? In searching for sufficient motivation for
the preparation of societies for lasting peace, will inclusive fitness concerns be
harnessed to give meaning to such rhetoric?
Perhaps hope lies in individuals whose actions extend beyond national-
ism and patriotism, to concern for the whole of humanity. Mordechai
Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, is an example. Having known that his
place of work, described as a cotton plant by the Israeli government, was a
factory for weapons of mass destruction, he decided to reveal the truth. Yet,
for acting on the belief that patriotism is too narrow a virtue in a world faced
with destruction, Vanunu was charged with treason, aggravated espionage
and transferring information useful to the enemy. Nonetheless, Vanunu has
been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Backed by 20 leading scientists, 12
of them Nobel laureates, the petition describes Vanunu as a “man of
conscience,” and goes on to plead that “Individual conscience is more
important in the nuclear age than the security of the state. We cannot expect
the state always to be right. It is necessary that individual citizens also take
responsibility.”’ Meanwhile, Vanunu’s attempt to save the Israelis from the
wrath of a nuclear war has earned him an 18-year prison sentence as a traitor.
In the final analysis, we can only hope for time to educate a new Homo
sapiens, a species that perceives that the seeds of warfare are ingrained in its
daily behaviors, attitudes, and-priorities. Perhaps more important is to
recognize that the cultural evolution of groups.has yet.to take the next step,
one where the welfare of humanity becomes identified with the imperative of
inclusive fitness. Only then might a clear perception of “‘what is” be
harnessed to prepare mankind for a society of ‘‘what ought to be.”

NOTES
1. Though Blight and Blumenfeld are likely correct in their assessment, it is also true that
rigorous studies assessing the impact of grass-roots or peace movements on the arms race are
hard to come by (Small 1988).
2. That the largest component of peace movements consists of white Anglo-Saxon men and
women is also no longer sufficient. That is, peace movements have become associated with
210 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

relatively wealthy, well-educated citizens who perceive a threat to their way of life. To broaden
the population base and get less-educated, poorer people more fully involved, for example, the
entire peace platform must be broadened. But for poorer groups in the population, world peace
and justice mean war on poverty and inequality at home as well as worldwide. Yet, many of these
broader aims conflict with the interests of relatively wealthy middle-class Westerners (Clotfelter
and Prysby 1980). Can we assume that individuals who seek to preserve their way of life and
national interests will respond to this broader challenge? Unfortunately, there are additional
grounds for pessimism. Failures in developmental economics are all too prevalent, most
commonly seen in conservatism in welfare programs or meager transfers of resources (aid) from
rich to poorer countries.
3. Claude Phillips offered this comment on reviewing an earlier draft of this manuscript. In
addition, he has raised many helpful points which have influenced contents of this and other
chapters.
APPENDIX I

A Cost—Benefit Framework
Applicable to Ethnic Conflict

INTRODUCTION

No study of conflict or warfare can avoid enumerating the benefits and costs
involved. We have done so in chapter 1 when discussing the functions of
aggression and warfare, in chapter 2 when defining and testing Hamilton’s
tule of inclusive fitness, in chapter 3 when speculating on threats of
competitive exclusion and weapons, and in Table 3.1 when highlighting
social benefits and costs of group solidarity. No wonder so many political
scientists, economists, sociologists, and psychologists employ cost—benefit
models when studying mobilization for warfare. That being the case, why did
we not set out to do so with equal vigilance?
Cost—benefit modeling is useful, indeed essential, to the development of
our theory. Existing cost—benefit models, however, are inadequate because
they lack a fundamental ingredient: an inclusive fitness component. Inclusive
fitness theory comes first in our scheme because it addresses ultimate utilities
that all individuals seek to maximize, and it redistributes weights attached to
specific benefits and costs of conflict. A related concern is that many
assumptions in traditional cost—benefit models lack realism, whereas they
become far more tenable when inclusive fitness enters the equation.
In this appendix, we show how inclusive fitness can be incorporated into
the cost—benefit framework. The principal aim is to demonstrate that
inclusive fitness considerations entail a bias for aggression when survival or
protection of nucleus ethnic groups is at issue—hence, humanity’s propensity
for warfare. Related concerns are to help the reader consolidate his or her
understanding of inclusive fitness and kin selection and show how one mode
212 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

of reasoning (inclusive fitness and the ultimate utilities to be maximized) can

be linked to another (the cost—benefit framework pertaining to all or any
other relevant factors entering conflict decisions). By linking two modes of
reasoning, the weaknesses in existing cost—benefit methodology will become
apparent and the strengths of inclusive fitness from a modeling standpoint
will be highlighted. Moreover, by taking up cost—benefit modeling at this
juncture in the development of our theory, shortcomings common to much of
the conflict literature can be highlighted [for example, Michael Banton’s
(1983) cost-benefit approach to ethnic conflict and Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita’s (1981) model of interstate warfare, neither of which incorporate
inclusive fitness].
No pretense is made that the model developed here is complete or
comprehensive. Indeed, to develop our model we must assume that (1)
coefficients of relatedness, as defined in Table 2.1, can be measured, (2)
specific costs and benefits are known and problems of measuring costs and
benefits, as discussed in chapter 2, are not present, and (3) individuals behave
similarly when weighting costs and benefits by coefficients of relatedness. In
chapters 4 and 5 the fallacy of such assumptions were confronted when we
examined how perceived costs and benefits (real and potential) are manip-
ulated at the societal level for group mobilization.
The model developed here aims to illustrate, formally, that when
everything else is assumed equal, inclusive fitness considerations bias the
individual decision process to opt for aggression/conflict. We begin with a
preamble to the model to specify working assumptions, the steps in its
development, and the place of inclusive fitness. Our application is strictly
limited to ethnic mobilization for conflict when ethnic groups are composed
largely of related individuals in nucleus ethnic groups. In this sense, it
conforms to the theme of Part 1, “Ultimate Evolutionary Strategies,” because
inclusive fitness is an ultimate utility and nucleus ethnic groups are rather
fundamental collectivities of genetically related individuals. Moreover, since
cost and benefit terms in our model are treated in an “everything else being
equal” sense and are not defined in terms of contemporary content, they are
equally applicable to all periods of civilization. Later, we will examine
differences between our model and existing models of ethnic conflict as well
as unresolved problems in all such models.

PREAMBLE TO THE MODEL

We are now in a position to combine inclusive fitness theory with the

principles of cost-benefit analysis to produce fresh insights into the
Appendix |
pits)

relationship between ethnic mobilization and the seeds of warfare

. Our
model rests on three premises: (1) that individuals have evolved
not only to be
egoistic but to be nepotistically altruistic (chapter 2), (2) that individu
als, and
individuals in nucleus ethnic groups, are predisposed to mobilize for resource
competition in ways that will enhance inclusive fitness and reprodu
ctive
potential (chapter 3), and (3) that a link exists between ethnic mobiliz
ation
for competition over scarce resources and the idea that intergroup conflict
/
warfare has been functional in humanity’s evolution [see chapter 1 in this
volume and Shaw (1985a)].
We begin by introducing a traditional cost—benefit framework which
assumes that (1) individuals are rational, (2) they seek to maximize their
individual utility, and (3) they assess alternatives to action in terms of
perceived monetary and nonmonetary benefits and costs, subject to informa-
tion constraints. As noted previously, our position is that the cost-benefit
framework is highly relevant to explaining the origins of conflict/warfare but
with an important caveat. When extended to incorporate the axiom of
inclusive fitness, it becomes far less vulnerable to otherwise valid criticisms of
rational choice theory as we will later explain.
Next, building on the important work of Gordon Tullock (1979), we
extend the simple cost—benefit framework to include various costs normally
not included in standard applications. These are costs relevant to conflict
situations. They involve the likely costs of physical injury, or costs which
might be imposed on a challenger if he or she fails to unseat the status quo.
Finally, we extend the model to incorporate the axiom of inclusive
fitness. This axiom provides theoretical underpinnings for understanding a
central problem in conflict studies: Why would an individual participate in
competition/warfare even when he or she may expect no direct private gain?
In so doing, it not only helps us to explain behavior which might otherwise
seem irrational from the standpoint of the standard cost—benefit model, but it
provides an additional rationale for social cohesion among individuals in kin
settings. Put differently, the standard cost-benefit model as employed by
Hechter et al. (1982) and Banton (1983) argues that collective action will
occur only when direct private gain to joining such action outweighs direct
private gain to individual action. Thus, it assumes there is only one condition
for sociality. We provide another by adding the notion that individuals join in
social collective action even when their direct private gain may be negligible
because overall inclusive fitness may provide a sizable indirect private gain.
Finally, the model incorporates risk of death. Again drawing on inclusive
fitness considerations, it explains how death per se can be tolerated as a
rational strategy by nucleus ethnic group members contemplating competi-
tion/warfare. To date, models of collective action have avoided this
214 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

troublesome question, focusing at most on the potential costs of injury. In the

absence of inclusive fitness considerations, death may well be a taboo subject
in the sense that it would be perceived as so costly to individuals that
competition/warfare involving unrelated individuals would almost have to be
ruled out. While expected private direct gain could be huge, thus offsetting
expectations of a high risk of death, history reveals that such situations are
sufficiently rare as to mitigate against situations of competition/warfare
beween groups of unrelated individuals.
To produce a more realistic model, it is entirely appropriate to weld one
kind of explanation (inclusive fitness) with another (cost-benefit analysis).
On the one hand, inclusive fitness renders the traditional cost—benefit model
more palatable to critics of the rational choice approach by modifying the
assumption that actors are narrowly self-centered. Critics have pointed out
that the assumption of egoism generates numerous paradoxes which do not
correspond with everyday observation or with experimental results on
behavior such as prisioners’ dilemma games (Frolich and Oppenheimer
1984). By integrating nepotistic altruism into the rational choice framework,
our model allows individual resouces to be directed toward both self-centered
and group-interest ends.
Inclusive fitness also embodies conditions under which highly question-
able assumptions of perfect information (which we do not assume in our
model) become more credible. In the real world, some individuals are likely to
have a great deal of information whereas others are likely to be extemely ill-
informed (Nelson and Winter 1982). (Thus, the premise that actors are
homogeneous with respect to available information topples as well in the
traditional cost-benefit framework.) Inclusive fitness restores this crucial
information assumption to a workable level. Groups of genetically related
individuals are likely to operate as information networks, making informa-
tion more or less equally available to members. Over time, these networks are
likely to be fed far and wide by genetically related members who occupy
different geographical and social space. Members drawing on such informa-
tion are, therefore, far more likely to be in a position to make reasonably
informed cost-benefit calculations.
On the other hand, the axiom of inclusive fitness demands that the
concepts of benefits and costs be represented more broadly than the usual
monetary and nonmonetary terms. When we refer to individual 7s gain in
sociobiological terms, we are alluding to enhanced prospects for survival and
net reproductive success. In a narrow sociobiological sense, gains per se
would be measured in terms of the intended effects of one’s actions on his or
her own survival and reproductive success (that is, classical fitness). They
would also include (1) the likely effects of his or her action on the survival and
Appendix I 215

net reproductive success of like genes, copies of which are held by related
individuals, and (2) the likely effects of action taken by other related
individuals on one’s own survival and net reproductive success (that is,
inclusive fitness). In a broader, and more meaningful sociobiological sense,
gain would incorporate enhanced prosects for survival and reproductive
success arising from successful ethnic mobilization to control wealth, status,
and power (that is, cultural elements). A full sociobiological model of gain
would further encompass social and psychological structures that are
relevant to one’s ultimate reproductive success.
From a methodological standpoint, we recognize that an individual’s
perception of gains to collective action resulting in conflict/warfare is
necessarily interpretive. That is, the potential for reproductive success of
one’s nucleus ethnic group would have to be calculated indirectly through
estimates of how sociopolitical, economic, and even psychological gains may
contribute to it. Moreover, it must be acknowledged that ideal interests such
as psychic comfort, honor, and sacrifice are part and parcel of the overall
cost—benefit calculation. These and related questions concern “actions in the
service of conscious intent” and will be taken up later.

A SIMPLE COST-BENEFIT FRAMEWORK

We begin by modeling the decision-making process of an average individual

in standard cost/benefit terms as follows:!
0 < P(COMP) < 1.0 (1)
if and only if
IU comp (t) — IU inert t> 0 (2)
with
ih T
IU comp (t) = fi Become — Ccomp wf (3)
i —20 t£=(0
if
IU jrert(t) = fi ; Binert (4)

where P(COMP) =the probability of engaging in competition,

IUcomp = the individual utility attached to engaging in competition,
TUyert = the individual utility attached to remaining inert or in the present
state, Boomp = the perceived benefits to competition, Biygrr = the per-
ceived benefits to remaining inert, Ccgmp = the perceived costs of engaging
in competition, T = the time horizon (period over which benefits and costs
are calculated), and t = the year of action or inaction.
Equations 1 and 2 tell us that the probability of engaging in competition,
P(COMP), will be greater than 0 if and only if the overall perceived utility to
216 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

engage in competition, IUcomp, exceeds that to remaining inert.

IUyert X P(COMP) is expressed here as a probability to convey an action
that can reasonably be expected to occur if conditions in the model are met.
Its exact value is to be determined by appropriate testing of the model.
Equations 3 and 4 provide general information on how IU is calculated.
Equation 3 tells us that the expected utility to engage in competition depends
on some as yet unspecified composite measure of benefits which the
individual expects from successful competition minus the initial fixed cost of
undertaking the competition. Equation 4 tells us what the expected net utility
of remaining inert (not engaging in competition) would be. Subtracting
Equation 4 from Equation 3 tells us whether the net outcome of engaging in
competition would exceed zero. If so, individuals are predicted to be
favorably disposed to competition (for example, undertaking a war).
Note that T in Equations 3 and 4 pertains to the time horizon over which
the benefits and costs are calculated. The integral sign

spp
ive

signifies that the expected net benefits and costs are calculated continuously
over the duration of T beginning with year t = 0

THE TULLOCK EXTENSION

We now extend this simple cost—benefit model to incorporate the work of

Gordon Tullock (1979), which focuses on the probability of engaging in
conflict/revolution. Tullock’s contribution has been to introduce an element
of risk into the model (risk of losing), and elaborate its cost elements to
include variable as well as initial fixed costs. His extension affects Equation 3
as follows:
IUcompe + [(P)Bcomp — Ccome] — (1 — p)Q — p'J (S)
where P = the probability of winning the competition, 1 — p = the recipro-
cal probability of losing, p’ = the probability of injury during competition,
J = the nonlethal injury suffered in competitive action, and QO = the costs
imposed on challenger if action fails.
The probability (p) is crucial because it introduces uncertainties about
whether action will succeed or not. This is unlike most cost—benefit
applications which estimate benefits and costs on the assumption that the
action will go ahead and that it will succeed. For example, cost—benefit
Appendix |
ZA

calculations concerning a proposed bridge are not likely to incorporate

possibilities that the bridge will collapse during construction or that funds
will be terminated thereby preventing its completion. In conflict situations,
however, uncertainties arise because information is usually imperfect and
individuals considering action are unsure about the nature of resistance (that
is, quality, technology, and overall strength of an opposing group). As noted
previously, this adds a greater element of realism to the model and thus
partially defuses criticism of rational choice theory.
In primitive societies which engage in conflict/warfare, the quality of
information would most likely depend on past experience with the foe (that
is, its proven dexterity, warring habits). In addition, it is reasonable to assume
that such information would be “passed down” and maintained through kin
networks, thus contributing to group solidarity. An implication for our
model is that related individuals mobilizing for competition would more
likely be able to effectively estimate the magnitude of p than individuals not
related by kin. If so, kinship would again tend to be a positive precondition
for successful warfare.
Equally important are variables introduced by Tullock to capture costs
of personal injury (J), or those which might be inflicted upon individuals (by
winners) should they lose during their competitive action (Q). Traditional
emphasis on private gains such as territory or women (minus initial costs to
mobilize) has now been redirected to include possible long-term variable
costs of repression or dehabilitation. While such concepts may seem
ambiguous from a measurement standpoint, one might approximate the
costs involved by estimating, say, the opportunity cost foregone to working
(due to physical injury, or assuming losers were exploited, possibly to the
extent of working as slave labor). Tullock, however, does not take up the
subject of death. This is considerably more troublesome than questions
involving personal injury. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, it is so troublesome to
rational choice models in conflict studies that it is usually avoided. We will
address this subject in our model shortly.
Note also that the crucial question for individuals considering action
versus inaction (a la Tullock) is not whether P>1— p or Booyp >
Ccomp or even [(p) Bcomp — Ccompl > (1 — p) Q — p’J. Rather, it is
whether the difference of net benefits to action exceeds those to inertia; thus,
apt LG id Beene a Cceeyithan 0S. P:(GOMP) st:
Finally, Tullock contends that public goods figure far less in the
individual’s utility calculus than do private goods. He points to conflict
situations in which net public goods have usually been reduced as a result. He
submits that a reading of history reveals that competition in pursuit of greater
access to resources has, on average, yielded less, not more, public goods. This
218 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

implies that conflict/warfare for public goods would not generally be a good
investment. Indeed, such goods are more often than not destroyed in warfare.
In line with Tullock’s position, public goods do not figure in the benefit
component of our model.

INCORPORATING INCLUSIVE FITNESS

We come now to a point of departure from all previous models of

mobilization/conflict/revolution/warfare. The axiom of inclusive fitness
dictates the direction of this departure. This axiom is crucial to understanding
the importance of nucleus ethnicity in the expression of humanity’s
propensity for warfare for five reasons. First, it implies that individuals judge
net benefits of engaging in competition not only in terms of direct private gain
but in terms of indirect gain associated with the well-being of genetically
related individuals. It thus provides a social rationale for related individuals
banding together to pursue competition. Previous models are driven only by
the principle of individual utility maximization or egoistic pursuit, without
consideration of nepotistic altruism.
Second, inclusive fitness considerations mitigate against “free riders”’
who typically undermine solidarity and the prospects for collective action
among unrelated individuals. In a group of related individuals, a free rider
might well benefit in terms of direct private gains by, say, cheating or
hoarding, but he or she would lose out indirectly by compromising the
average fitness of other group members. This would likely instill a strong
interest in the well-being and performance of each group member to the
extent that free riders would be quickly identified and reprimanded. Again,
this would add to group cohesion and solidarity.
Third, inclusive fitness considerations reduce problems of unequal
distribution of the spoils of conflict/warfare. Among groups of unrelated
individuals, disagreement over spoils is known to be frequent both before and
after successful conflicts. We would maintain that this has been sufficiently
prevalent as to mitigate against collective action by groups consisting of
unrelated individuals. Among genetically related individuals, however, those
who receive relatively less (warriors) than other kin (the chief) still obtain an
indirect gain via inclusive fitness.
Fourth, inclusive fitness considerations enhance the process of selecting
and rallying around a group leader. Baer and McEachron (1982) show that
dominance hierarchies in animal kin systems are a key to their success in both
mobilizing members to control resources and mobilize against other groups.
Appendix I
219

Leifer (1981) concludes that selection of a leader is necessary to produce

effective mobilization among ethnic groups, especially if they are econom-
ically subordinate.
Finally, inclusive fitness allows us to postulate how the cost of death can
be tolerated in conflict/warfare situations. As shocking and destabilizing as
the death of a group member may be, inclusive fitness considerations provide
a rational basis for accepting the costs of death in warfare.
These considerations interact to make mobilization for conflict or
warfare a more viable strategy if pursued among related kin. From an
evolutionary perspective, these considerations are the bedrock upon which
we link ethnic mobilization and the seeds of warfare.
To simplify our presentation, we now set Ucoyyp: as defined in Equation
5, equal to Z;. The subscript (i) signifies that the private benefit/cost
component refers to individual i, whereas benefit-cost components for all
other individuals genetically related to this individual i are denoted by j. The
axiom of inclusive fitness enters the individual’s benefit-cost formulation as
follows:
N
IUcome = Zi; + kx SZ;
j=1
pt
where k = the average coefficient of relatedness between individual i and all
other members in the kin/ethnic group, or
N
k= > 4N
j=1
and N = the number of individuals in the group.
Equation 6 tells us that individual i calculates his or her utility to
engaging in competition not only in terms of his or her own perceived private
gain but in terms of the indirect benefits he or she shares via the private gain of
his or her relatives as well. His or her share in that private gain is represented
by & which measures the average coefficient of genetic relatedness between
individual i and all other group members (means to determine the approxi-
mate value of kare provided in the addendum to this appendix). Average & is
used in view of its greater computational ease in the model. Equally
important, however, k can be used to approximate the typically imperfect
information that individual / is likely to confront when assessing his or her
relationship with each j; the use of k also acknowledges that as group size
increases, k;, may be “unreal” in specific cases, and k avoids the problem of
the probability that any individual ; is a cheater.
220 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

An implication of Equation 6 is that while Rwill decline rapidly as the kin

or nucleus ethnic group becomes large, inclusive fitness retains its influence
on individual ?’s cost benefit calculation because low k wili be multiplied by
the value of Z across all related individuals N (which, by definition, becomes
large as the group expands). The appropriate decision rule now concerning
desirability of engaging in competition is if
N N
(Zi + k x> Z;) > (Binert + k X > Binert) (7)
aa oA
then
0 < P(COMP) < 1
An implication of Equation 7 is that individual j can rationally
participate in collective action even though he or she may gain nothing
directly himself or herself. For example, IUcomp may exceed zero, even if
benefits accruing to the individual equal zero, as long as the benefits accrued
by one’s kin exceed zero (k Z,; > 0). In addition, IUcomp can exceed zero
even if benefits accruing to the individual are less than zero as long as
kj x Z, — the negative benefits accruing to the individual are greater than
zero.
This point can be illustrated with a crude simulation where the value of
Z = 100 units, N = 51, the average coefficient of relatedness between any
group member i and all other group membersjis assumed to be 0.05, and the
value of remaining inactive (Byygrr) is assumed to be 25 units per individual.
These figures are used to calculate the net benefits for an average individual
under the assumption (1) that he or she has no relative in the group (case A),
and (2) that he or she is related, on average, by a factor of 0.05 (case B). For
case A,
n= S1 n= 5S1
100 + (0.00) x S$) (100) > 25 + (0.00) x S$) (25) = 100 > 2s
ped j=1
In Case B, oar pes
100 +. (0.05) (5,000) > 25 + (0.05) (1,250) = (100-+ 250) > 87.5
According to case A, individual i must stand to gain at least 26 units of
direct private returns to perceive conflict/warfare as desirable. In case B,
however, individual i can participate at zero private return. If an individual
does so, he or she foregoes 100 units of direct private benefits but still gains
indirectly via inclusive fitness (by 250 units). Indeed, he or she could emulate
“true” sacrifical behavior (go to war and die in the process) without violating
Appendix I
221

rational strategy considerations since indirect gain (assuming

success in
conflict) remains well above the 87.5 units offered by the alternative
of non-
action.

DEATH AS A RATIONAL STRATEGY

We are now in a position to explore the ways in which death can be tolerated
in situations of conflict/warfare. We continue to examine costs and benefits
from the standpoint of the individual, but it is necessary now to disaggregate
the average individual into several “types” of average individuals (for
example, fathers, sons). That is, it follows from the axiom of inclusive fitness
that tolerance limits attached to death in conflict/warfare will differ
according to one’s position in a kin network. This leads to an interesting
implication, which seems to accord with observation, that the lower the cost
of death associated with particular individuals in the group, the more those
individuals will be selected over others for combat.
Suppose the kin group that is contemplating conflict/warfare consists of
five members: a father, a mother, a son and two daughters — a basic family
unit. To estimate the benefits to competition for each member in the group,
Equation 7 tells us we need a value of N (which is 5), a value of Z (which we
continue to assume equals 100 units for each member), and a value of k for
each member. For our purposes, we need not consider the costs and benefits
of inertia in Equation 7. The value of k for each member of the group can be
derived from the following table.

Pairwise Coefficients of Relatedness (k)

Father Mother Son Daughter Daughter

Father 1.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 0.5

Mother 0.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 0.5
Son 0.5 0.5 1.0 0.5 0.5
Daughter 0.5 0.5 0.5 1.0 0.5
Daughter 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1.0

Average k’ 0.375 0.375 0.5 0.5 0.5

22D GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Note that values on the diagonal are excluded as they represent the
individual’s genetic relatedness with himself or herself. Thus, the father’s
offspring contain 1.5 of his gene replicas (same for mother), whereas from the
standpoint of each son or daughter, 2.0 of their gene replicas are contained in
other family members.
The figures in the above tabulation yield the following payoff scenarios
(in keeping with Equation 7):

ee
Se

Initial case Father dies Son dies

Private Inclusive Private Inclusive Private Inclusive

direct fitness direct fitness direct fitness
net net net net - net net
benefit benefit benefit benefit benefit benefit
EAR ee eee NR ee Se ME ease ee, ae ee ee TIT
Father 100 150 0 150 100 100
Mother 100 150 100 150 100 100
Son 100 200 100 150 0 200
Daughter 100 200 100 150 100 150
Daughter 100 200 100 150 100 150
sia lm ta ai AEA ER Ee a Pick te ne SE ae

Average 100 180 80 150 80 140

The initial case implies that each individual in the group is predisposed to
tolerate death as a rational strategy because inclusive fitness considerations
will cover his or her “private” and material loss. It also implies that sons and
daughters would be more likely to perceive death as a rational strategy since
inclusive fitness considerations would compensate for their loss more than
for the loss of mothers and fathers. However, from a group perspective, the
death of sons or daughters would actually be more costly than the deaths of
fathers or mothers. The reason for this is that inclusive fitness considerations
are influenced more by the death of sons and daughters than by the death of
fathers and mothers. This is illustrated in the comparison of the average
private and inclusive fitness benefits to group members when a father dies as
opposed to a son (that is, resulting average inclusive fitness is lower when son
dies). :
An implication of this crude simulation is that parents would be more
predisposed to sacrifice themselves in warfare than their young adult sons or
daughters. This, of course, conforms with observation. Furthermore, in
expanded kin systems, it is possible that when a choice must be made between
fathers and mothers, or sons and daughters, it would be less costly (from a kin
Appendix |
223

group standpoint) to opt for the death of a father or son. The reason
is simply
that a few remaining males in expanded kin systems will suffice to
ensure that
remaining females are fertilized and that the lineage is continu
ed. Put
differently, males are far more dispensable than are females in
situations
where reproductive potential is at stake. Again, this is the observed pattern
so
well conveyed in the sinking ship/lifeboat scenario where women
and
children are sent to the lifeboats first. Bear in mind, this interpretation
need
not be construed as opposed to traditional interpretations (for example
, the
social responsibility of parents to care for and defend their children, honor,
chivalry, greater dexterity of males in fighting). It merely provides inclusive
fitness underpinnings for the evolution and reinforcement of behavioral
patterns involving combat and selection of warriors or soldiers.
This proposition bears on the development of our model because it
allows us to say something about tolerable limits or costs of death as a
rational strategy. Assuming males are more dispensable than females in
conflict/warfare situations, do decision rules prescribe tolerance limits? Also,
at what point do decision rules come into play? Our answer to these questions
is that such rules (however crude) tend to be established far in advance of
escalating conflict/warfare. They are visible and quantifiable in the form of
established armies or cadres of warriors that have been preselected to engage
directly in potentially lethal conflict. In other terms, it is not unreasonable to
interpret an existing cadre of warriors (say, 20 percent of all prime-age males)
as one category of costs (resources) that an expanded kin system is prepared
to absorb (forsake) should it decide to engage in conflict/warfare. Insofar as
the effects of “lost” males on net reproductive success can be compensated by
the remaining males, such costs deplete a surplus. Viewed in this light, armies
or cadres of warriors can be compared with another category of costs
(resources), namely, a stockpile of nonessential, nonhuman resources which
have been allocated exclusively for conflict (that is, resources beyond the
immediate survival and net reproductive needs of the population).

CRITICISM AND REPLY

Preliminary versions of this cost-benefit model have benefited from com-

ments and criticism by several colleagues. In particular, Phillip Kitcher
(1987), a philosopher, has drawn attention to possible misinterpretations of
the use of inclusive fitness in Equations 6 and 7. They concern “double
counting” or the perspective from which individuals are presumed to
calculate costs and benefits. We summarize our reply to Kitcher here as a
means of clarifying and elaborating how these equations operate.
224 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

The first point for emphasis is that we model the utility calculus of
engaging in competition/warfare from each individual’s perspective, not
from the perspective of the group as a whole. Each individual calculates
inclusive fitness by assessing the fitness-enhancing effects of his or her actions
on each of his or her affected kin. Thus, in Equation 7, only the effects of
individual i on related and affected individuals j are captured, as we net out
benefits of inertia. Alternatively, effects of joni are not captured in Equation
7. So far there is no double counting.
Now suppose that individuals 7, and 4, are uncles of niece j. Following
our model, both i, and 4, will be inclined to attribute effects to themselves of,
say, assisting j. Is this double counting? We submit that it is not because i, and
i, are “investing” in a return from a common good. If I am uncle A, do I feel
like less of an uncle to my niece, perceive fewer benefits to helping her, or
benefit less by her survival and reproduction if she also has an uncle B who
similarly benefits? Put differently, utility is enhanced all around when
investment in a public good (shared genes) is involved.
Kitcher also raises the problem of sequential decision making. Suppose
uncle i, spends $1,000 to augment the future fitness of niece j (for example,
on the cost of a good education). Suppose also that the maximum amount
required to attain a good education is $1,100. If uncle 4, realizes there is a
$1,100 limit, he surely will not contribute $1,000 as well. If he does, and were
he to credit his inclusive fitness with $1,000 worth of ‘‘effects,” then he (or
the utility model representing him), would indeed be guilty of double
counting. In situations of warfare, however, the situation is entirely different.
Sequential decision making requires a “‘God’s eye view,” perfect information,
and the ability to calculate marginal utilities. Yet, warfare is an all or nothing
event with probabilities of success clustering around 0 or 100 percent. Given
that life or death is involved, we propose that evolution would favor the type
of decision which would galvanize a major effort by each individual involved.
This implies that individuals would be conditioned throughout sociobiologi-
cal evolution to believe that each will be as important as every other in a
pending battle and that each can make a (if not the) difference to victory. Put
differently, social evolution and institutional arrangements in the service of
warfare would completely break down were sequential decision making
prevalent among potential fighters. The perceived costs to any one individual
(especially the first) would almost certainly rule out the desire and motivation
to participate.
Thus far, our representation of inclusive fitness is compatible with
Hamilton’s formulation (Grafen 1982). In switching from the individual to
the group, however, it is important to recognize that “group fitness” cannot
be derived by adding the inclusive fitness of each member in the group.
Appendix I
225

Kitcher has suggested we may be at risk doing this. Rather, when we talk of
enhanced group fitness we must leave inclusive fitness to the domain of the
individual and return to the concept of “classical fitness.” That is, the
classical fitness of the group as a unit is enhanced by the combined actions of
all its members. This was discussed in chapter 3 in terms of “balance of
power” and group selection.
Finally, Kitcher queries whether inclusive fitness benefits might not
cancel out in purely egalitarian contexts. In an artificial situation this would
certainly be true. Suppose, for example, that uncles i, and i, each have
children of their own j, and j,, respectively, that i, gives $1,000 toward
educating j,,, and that this action is reciprocated between i, and j,. In this case,
inclusive fitness and classical fitness coincide. In reality, however, pure
egalitarianism almost never exists, and in situations of competition/warfare it
is extremely unlikely. When soldiers are selected and armies are formed,
individuals are sent forth in nonreciprocal fashion to make the ultimate
sacrifice. They are usually males, whereas many of those who are left behind
can reasonably be described as unarmed women and children who are
“helpless” in the face of armed aggression.

DISCUSSION

Perhaps the most visible difference between our model and most previous
attempts to explain ethnic mobilization/collective action is that we reject the
group per se as the basic unit of analysis. For example, in the so-called
developmental model, ethnic groups are treated simply as given, as remnants
of the traditional society. Moreover, their persistence in the face of
development is usually treated as a residual problem (Blumer 1977; Lipset
and Rokken 1967). In the so-called “reactive ethnicity model” (Hechter
1975, 1978), internal colonalism, uneven industrial and economic develop-
ment, and cultural division of labor are expected to operate on the group to
produce ethnic polarization. Otherwise, it is assumed that it would not
persist. In the so-called “‘ecological model” (Barth 1969; Hannan 1979), the
group is again the basic unit of analysis, where competition is attributed to
disequilibrium between two groups in access to resources.
Each of these theoretical formulations has chosen as an organizing
principle a set of relatively recent cultural and environmental factors, be they
economic, historical, sociopolitical, or geographic/terriotorial.2 In our
theoretical framework, these factors are treated as contemporary proximate
causes. This is not to deny their importance. On their own, however, they are
226 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

not only incomplete but fail to provide a satisfactory explanation of general

patterns and directions of ethnic mobilization. Moreover, by taking the
notion of “group” for granted, they are unable to identify the fundamental
principles of sociality that render groups possible. Alternatively, our model
commences with the individual as the basic unit of analysis. In addition,
inclusive fitness considerations are posited as social cement to predispose
related individuals to mobilize for competition. Therefore, to meaningfully
investigate ethnic mobilization, the functions that ethnicity is presumed to
serve must ultimately be grounded at the level of the individual decision-
making process. From this perspective, the concept of a group must be
defended rather than accepted as given.
Having said this, we acknowledge recent attempts to apply an individual-
based approach to the analysis of ethnic competition (Banton 1983; Hechter
et al. 1982). This stems from growing recognition that the structural
approach is inadequate because the concept of the group itself is in question.
As an alternative, rational choice theory has been applied. This is a step in the
right direction. However, in both Banton’s application of rational choice
theory and the cost—benefit model by Hechter et al., the concept of the group
continues to be problematic. In Banton’s application, it is unclear why and
under what circumstances physical and cultural differences are chosen over
others (such as economic criteria) as principles of group formation. In
Hechter et al., an ad hoc explanation is devised to justify the special
significance of ethnic collective action. It becomes tautological when it
contends that ethnic organization is special because it is ethnically based.
More fundamental, however, when collective action is viewed from the
stance of rational choice theory, its existence is inherently problematic.
Ethnic group mobilization is no exception. While recognizing this problem,
neither Banton nor Hechter et al. deal with it adequately. In contrast, by
combining principles of individual choice with a raison d’étre for ethnic
group action (inclusive fitness), our model reflects the underlying compat-
ibility between rational choice theory and evolutionary biology (Margolis
1982).
Finally, models by Banton (1983) and Bueno de Mesquita (1981) can be
faulted for their use of a narrow, traditional conceptualization of rationality.
Neither acknowledge the importance of bounded rationality or channeled
cognition, processes which figure strongly in the development of our theory
in chapters 4 and 5.3 Moreover, implicit assumptions about the socio
psychological nature of ethnicity have not been adequately incorporated in
Banton’s rational choice theory. Are we to treat sociopsychological underpin-
nings of ethnicity in terms of contemporary, proximate environmental
Appendix | Dil

contexts alone? To do so would be to completely ignore the work of

evolutionary biologists and the kind of approach advocated here.

CONCLUSION

Our use of kin selection theory may give the impression that the major
“instinct” of organisms is mathematics and that they go about computing
coefficients of consanguinity to determine relative advantages of joining in
collective action for conflict/warfare. Yet, kin selection theory and the axiom
of inclusive fitness neither posits nor precludes conscious motivation and
cognition. Evolutionary biologists assure us only that organisms act as ifthey
had performed such calculations, because the relative frequency of the genes
underlying behaviors such as nepotistic altruism has indeed been determined
by just such mathematics working itself out over the course of evolution
(Barkow 1980). The ‘“‘as if” clause is used much the same way in economics
and in cost~benefit analysis. Individuals are not presumed to sit down with
calculator in hand to work out the implications of unambigous time horizons,
investments, or risks of failure. It is assumed, however, that they make some
attempt to do so (however crude).
Having said this, underpinnings of the “as if” clause require a great deal
of development to render our approach and assumptions concerning
conscious intent more applicable to real-world situations. An essential step is
to formulate linkages between the axiom of inclusive fitness — as it affects
predispositions toward conflict/warfare — and evolved psychological and
cultural “reinforcing” mechanisms. This challenge encompasses two broad
dimensions. One is to differentiate patterns of linkages at different levels of
societal evolution. The other is to elaborate biological and psychological
underpinnings of conscious motivation and cognition itself. These form the
contents of Part II of this book.

NOTES

1. To avoid complexity, Equations 3 and 4 do not contain a discounting procedure.

Discounting is used to bring benefits and costs to a common basis known as “present values.” In
most applications, it is used to calculate expected net monetary returns to capital investment. A
companion procedure is to calculate the rate at which individuals are willing to exchange
consumption now for consumption in the future. Economists call this rate the “‘social time
preference rate” (STP). We advocate its use because (1) the STP refers to current and future
228 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

consumption rather than monetary returns to capital per se and (2) such consumption
opportunities are relevant to the notion of fitness as employed in sociobiological contexts of
ethnic mobilization and competition.
2. Other, somewhat interdisciplinary examples are illustrated by Turner (1986), though
contemporary proximate causes have remained the center of attention.
3. To some extent Bueno de Mesquita’s model (1981) must be exempt from criticisms
directed at Hechter et al. (1982) and Banton (1983). Bueno de Mesquita focuses on necessary but
not sufficient conditions for interstate war rather than ethnic conflict per se. In addition, he
models utilities to participating in interstate conflict from the perspective of a national
decisionmaker (a “‘strong leader”), rather than from the perspective of individuals who
constitute the nation. Though Bueno de Mesquita’s model clearly identifies variables important
to interstate conflict, we perceive several problems — ones that become immediately apparant
from the theory developed in this book. They include the following: (1) Bueno de Mesquita takes
the “nation” as given whereas we examine the necessary conditions for its evolution (chapters 3
and 4); (2) inclusive fitness is absent in his cost—benefit formulation, thus ruling out a key alliance
factor among nucleus ethnic groups to produce ever-larger cultural ethnic groups, some of which
have evolved to be nation-states; (3) the costs of self-sacrifice to the death — an ultimate cost in
warfare — are not adjusted for the intensity of bonds between individuals and the group (the
nation); (4) also neglected is the way that bonding between individuals and the nation would
affect ferocity and duration at war, as well as a national leader’s risk aversion to entering a
conflict; (5) the influence of bounded rationality, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism on the
formation of group boundaries and processing of information concerning out-groups do not
figure in his model; (6) potential differences in preference orderings among groups (for example,
among leaders of ethnic groups in multiethnic states) are assumed away because of data/
measurement problems, yet many nations and states have not mobilized for warfare or have
disintegrated during warfare due to internal conflict over unshared preferences; (7) conditions
are absent under which homogeneous preferences tend to prevail to the extent that cohesive
warfaring groups such as nation-states emerge; and (8) propensities for warfare between states
with differing backgrounds and characteristics are generally not examined, meaning that wars
involving nationalism and nation-states (Israel, Japan, the Afrikaners) are not differentiated
from those involving patriotism and multiethnic states (the United States, the USSR).

ADDENDUM: COMPUTATION OF APPROXIMATE

VALUE OF k

The value of the averge kin selection coefficient of any particular individual i
in a given society can be expressed as a function of two variables: the genetic
relatedness between i and his or her kin and the average number of children
per family in the society. :
A configuration resembling a family tree of individual is presented in the
Figure I.1, where m represents the average number of children per family, and
the genetic relatedness is coded for each group of relatives.
Figure Legend: For individual i, his or her genetic relatives can be divided
into two broad categories: ka and kb: ka refers to his offspring as well as his
FIGURE I.1 Evaluation of the proximate value of F. m = average number of children per
family, s = i’s siblings’ s, = siblings’ children, S, = siblings’ grandchildren,
M; = #’s mother, F; = i’s father, sP = parents’ siblings, sb. = parents’ siblings’
children, s?, = parents’ siblings’ grandchildren, i, = individual i’s children, and
i, = individual i’s grandchildren.

kb fo SSa OS

p
sP m SP, Sa
$ +
; ‘ +——_ kb2

if +
= Fi «<—— kb1
230 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

brothers’ and sisters’ offspring, and kb refers to his parents, his parents’
brothers and sisters, and their offspring. These subcategories are developed as
follows:
kal refers to the individual’s brothers and sisters. Given the average
number of children per family m, then there are (m — 1) brothers and sisters.
The average genetic relatedness between them and / is 0.5.
ka2 refers to 7’s children and 7’s brothers’ and sisters’ children.
The total .
number of children in this subcategory is m + [m(m — 1)] because i has m
children and 7’s brothers and sisters have a total of m(m — 1) children. The
genetic relatedness is 0.5 between i and i’s children and 0.25 between i and 7’s
nieces and nephews.
ka3 refers to i’s grandchildren (numbering m2), grandnieces and
grandnephews [numbering m2(m — 1)]. The coefficients of genetic related-
ness are 0.25 and 0.125 respectively. .
Turning to the second category, kb1 refers to 7’s parents, each of whom
share one-half of ’s genes.
kb2 refers to 7’s parents’ brothers and sisters, [numbering 2(m — 1)] with
a genetic relatedness of 0.25.
kb3 refers to the children of the parents’ brothers and sisters. They
number 2m(m — 1) with a genetic relatedness of 0.125.
kb4 refers to the grandchildren of the parents’ brothers and sisters. They
should number 2m2(m — 1) with an average genetic relatedness of 0.0625.

Simplifying:
ka = 0.5(m — 1) + 0.5m + 0.25m(m — 1) + 0.25m2 + 0.125m2(m — 1)
(773 2b 3mne— 6mm = 4)
8

kb = 0.5 (2) + 0.25(2)(m — 1) + 0.125 (2m) (m — 1) + (0.0625)(2m2)(m — 1)

(2m3_+ 2m2_+ 4m_+ 8)
16

ka + kb = (4m3 + 8m2 + 16m)

16

The coefficient of the average value of relatedness, &, is then obtained by

dividing (ka + kb) by the number of kin included in this calculation. The
total number of kin is obtained by adding the number of kin in ka, which is
equal to (m — 1) + (m) + (m — 1)(m) + (m2) + (m2)(m — 1),to the num-
bers vol.) kin sini ckby i whichrcolss seeguals to. (2) ek
(m — 1)(2) + (m — 1)(2m) + (m — 1)(2m2). The total, after simplication,
is equal to (33 + 2m? — m); kis therefore equal to:
Appendix | 251

[(4m3 + 8m? + 16m) / (3m3 + 2m2-m)= (4m3 + 8m2 + 16m)

16] (48m3 + 32m2 — 16m)
if m= 3, k= 0.148; m=S5, k=0.116; m=7
k=,
0.105: m= 9,
k = 0.099.
APPENDIX Il

Incest Avoidance and Early Warfare

Directed learning to avoid incest and inbreeding depression might seem far
removed from the subject of warfare, but it is likely to have reinforced in-
group amity/out-group enmity in a variety of ways. Two examples illustrate .
mechanisms among nonhuman primates on the one hand and humans on the
other. In the case of nonhuman primates, genetic costs of inbreeding have
been avoided through the intergroup transfer of males. This process typically
begins with the emigration of young males who, subsequently, arrive at the
perimeter of a different group. Conflict with members of the new group is
imminent as the foreign male fights to gain entry, primarily to cohabitate with
females in the group. The entire process promotes xenophobia and reinforces
aggressive and hostile acts toward potential intruders.
A very different kind of outbreeding strategy involves primitive warfare
among humans, where women are taken as loot. Capture of out-group
females through successful warfare serves three functions: (1) it reduces
inbreeding depression by increasing the number of available partners for
reproduction; (2) it increases variation in the warring group’s genetic stock —
itself a desirable feature of population genetics; and (3) it contributes to
group size. The latter consideration would have been especially important in
environments where groups were effective forces of selection (see chapter 3).
The practice of taking females for loot would undoubtedly have set rival
groups on edge and reinforced xenophobia and out-group enmity in the
process.
What evidence suggests that incest avoidance is an example of directed
learning, and how does it figure in our theory? The answer to the latter part of
our question is that it played (and plays) a role similar to the example just
234 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

given, but only in tribal contexts. Today, its role is largely covert. To explain
how and why, we must address how incest avoidance is programmed by
directed learning. Our point of departure is the artificial antithesis of nature
versus culture in explaining incest taboos. This false dichotomy can be traced
to ideological objections to Westermark’s (1891, 1922) hypothesis concern-
ing outbreeding and incest avoidance. The debate is crudely represented in
Figure II.1.
FIGURE II.1 Competing perspectives on the evolution of the incest taboo. Adapted from
McCabe (1983).
INFRAHUMAN PRIMATE/ »>MODERN HUMAN ORIGIN OF
EARLY HUMAN SOCIETY SOCIETY INCEST TABOO

Early, intimate Early intimate Normative

West k association; ———> association; ——~» reflection of
eereimhal sexual disinterest/ sexual disinterest/ biopsychological
aversion aversion reality

Early, intimate Early intimate Normative —

Westermark’s association; ————> _ association; ————+ intervention in
critics strong sexual strong sexual biopsychological
desire desire reality

Observing the injurious consequences of inbreeding among nonhuman

animals and the aversion to sexual interaction between persons living
together from childhood, Westermark argued that (1) incest avoidance
existed before the symbolization of the incest taboo and (2) the incest taboo
— an artifact of culture — reinforced biopsychological predispositions.
According to his theory, these predispositions gained effect through a kind of
“negative imprinting.” That is, biosychological predispositions against incest
work to reduce sexual attraction among intimates, be they related children or
nonrelated children exposed to long periods of familiarization through
cohabitation.
The dissenting view of incest avoidance held that women and men are
naturally inclined to mate within the family, that is, with those with whom
they experience intimate childhood association, and that incest taboos are the
great cultural invention of humanity to prevent this. Invention of the incest
taboo was viewed as a crucial step in the genesis of culture and the transition
from primates where incest was presumed to be practiced uninhibited. For
those opposed to Westermark’s theory, such as Levi-Strauss (1956) and
Sahlins (1960), the incest taboo was revered as a watershed separating human
and nonhuman evolution (Demarset 1977). Indeed, it was singled out as the
Appendix II 235

raison d’étre for intermarriage between nonkin, the reduced importance of

kin bonds, and the ever-growing amalgamations of groups from band to
tribe.
Four major points have emerged from the debate. First, theoretical
underpinnings for incest avoidance, and thus cultural reinforcement of incest
taboos, are compatible with biological priorities in evolution. Studies on
inbreeding depression are unambiguous in their conclusion that close-relative
inbreeding in normally diversified populations reduces the fitness of off-
spring.! From an evolutionary standpoint, then, strategies to avoid inbreed-
ing would have produced more offspring and greater chances of survival in
unpredictable environments.
Second, available evidence points to incest avoidance among nonhuman
primates as well as humans. For example, the inhibition of mother—son
mating has been reported among rhesus monkeys, and sibling incest
avoidance has been observed for Japanese macaques, savannah baboons and
chimpanzees (Demarest 1977; Fox 1980; McCabe 1983). Since “culture”
differentiates humans from nonhuman primates, it is more reasonable to
conclude that incest taboos have evolved as cultural mechanisms to help
reinforce the biological priorities of incest avoidance. In this respect, culture
hardly figures as a watershed separating human and nonhuman evolution.
Third, Westermark’s hypothesis has received sufficient confirmation as
to prompt scholars to strongly urge its reconsideration. Recall that, according
to Westermark, early or prolonged association between intimates is expected
to reduce sexual desire and, should they in fact mate, reproductive levels.
Evidence consistent with this hypothesis involves the sim-pua form of
marriage in Taiwan where parents would procure for their infant son an
infant girl, as a future bride, and adopt her into their home. High rates of
marriage failure were the observed result (Wolf 1970; Wolf and Huang
1980). Also observed is a general absence of marriage among children
socialized in Israeli kibbutzes (Talmon 1964; Shepher 1971; Tiger and
Shepher 1975; Shepher 1983;), and lower reproduction when a man marries
his patrilateral parellel cousin, the “father’s brother’s daughter’s marriage”
common in the Arab Middle East (McCabe 1983).
Fourth, Westermark’s hypothesis does not presume the existence of an
ironclad, instinctive, “voice of the blood” abhorrence of mating with close
relatives (McCabe 1983). As van den Berghe (1983a) points out, inbreeding
avoidance is only one side of the fitness-maximizing coin. Maximizing
inclusive fitness calls not for maximal outbreeding, but for an optimum
balance between outbreeding and inbreeding. Just as too much inbreeding
reduces fitness through inbreeding depression, too much outbreeding can
dilute the benefits of kin selection and nepotism in the maximization of
236 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

inclusive fitness (see chapter 2). Because social animals draw benefits by
living among kin, they will tend to live among kin and also tend to mate with
kin. This perpetuates a level of inbreeding that optimizes the mean inclusive
fitness of the group and is consistent with the observation that inbreeding
occurs among kin alongside incest taboos.2 This key point alone refutes the
idea that instigation of the incest taboo is responsible for ever-growing
amalgamations of groups from band to tribe.
Again, the epigenetic view of development represents a compromise
between instinct versus learning, especially when it advocates an empirically
based model of incest avoidance. Lumsden and Wilson (1980) do so when
they (1) hypothesize the strong plausibility of an innate bias against incest, (2)
acknowledge that individual decisions concerning incest avoidance will be
sensitive to the activities of others, who are the cultural “environment,” and
(3) express individual choices involving incest avoidance as an “ethnographic
curve” representing the frequency or probability distribution of societies
where members show various rates of choice. Variations in the prevalence of
incest avoidance are clearly apparent from their study of the ethnographic
record. But it is also true that the central tendency of this behavior, across
cultures and over time, is to avoid inbreeding depression and to foster
development and reinforcement of cultural incest taboos. This prompts
Lumsden and Wilson, as well as others including Fox (1980), Bixler (1981),
and Irons (1983), to conclude that cultural taboos of incest avoidance are best
seen as having coevolved with genetic selection to maximize inclusive fitness.
We can now speculate on the interaction of incest avoidance, kin
selection strategies, and the balance-of-power process. How did they impact
on intergroup conflict during hunter-gatherer times? The propensity to avoid
inbreeding depression would have required access to a different genetic stock.
This could have been accommodated by (1) the transfer of males between
groups, (2) the transfer of females between groups, or (3) raiding of other
groups for females. With everything else held constant, any of these strategies
would have served the purpose. However, a propensity for kin selection and
nepotistic altruism would favor some inbreeding. This would have led to an
aversion toward extensive intergroup transfers. Not to have done so would
have led to a weakening of kin cohesion within groups. So, raiding for females
would have thus been most preferable. Furthermore, groups as forces of
selection and the balance-of-power process (see chapter 3) would have placed
a priority on larger group size. Since reciprocal exchange of individuals
between groups would have stabilized group size, raiding for women would
again have been attractive.
It is also important to acknowledge that males would have been the
predominant fighters in offensive or defensive war. Balances of power and
Appendix II 237,

intergroup competition would thus have placed a premium on retaining

males. Related males would be more inclined to fight to the death in the
service of inclusive fitness than would unrelated males (brought in by
intergroup transfer). This consideration would further tip the balance against
intergroup transfer of males, which is so prevelant among nonhuman
primates, toward plunder for females. A second-best strategy would have
been the intergroup transfer of females between nucleus ethnic groups to
maintain alliances. Indeed, intermarriage involving transfer of females
between nearby and perhaps related nucleus ethnic groups (through group
fissioning) would have helped to make alliances possible, thus contributing to
groups as forces of selection (a la chapter 3).3
In past and present tribal contexts, then, innate tendencies to optimize
inbreeding/outbreeding have had direct as well as indirect effects on
humanity’s propensity for warfare. Directly they yield a sociobiological cause
for warfare. It might seem dubious that fighting for mates would outweigh
the expected costs of warfare, but as Hamiliton (1975) observes, to raise
mean fitness in hunter—gatherer groups either new territory or outside mates
had to somehow be obtained. The indirect effect of inbreeding/outbreeding
strategies is reinforcement of fear and hostility toward members of outgroups
— individuals who might steal one’s wife and daughters. Taking of females
through raiding and warfare is, of course, evident in the behavior of tribes
today (van den Berghe 1981). Plunder and rape are also well recorded aspects
of virtually every war involving postindustrial society and can reasonably be
expected to be one of the fears promoting xenophobia between hostile states.
Our message is not that incest avoidance should be enlisted as a significant
cause of war proneness today. Rather, its relevance should be viewed as a
force of the past which has shaped group boundaries, contributed to in-group
amity/out-group enmity and, therefore, reified xenophobia as a powerful
innate bias in mental development.

NOTES
1. Those likely to suffer most are cousins and more closely related individuals. This is not
to say, however, that a small nucleus ethnic group, isolated for a long time, could not have
eventually escaped the effects of inbreeding depression. By inbreeding, genes least “‘fit”’ for the
environment in which the organism exists would eventually become extinct leaving behind those
individuals with “fit” genes. It is also true, however, that this would be a most desirable
evolutionary strategy. Inbred groups which develop in a static, isolated environment lack the
flexibility (or variation in their gene pool), to adjust to changes in the mileu that similar outbred
species exhibit (Bixler 1981).
2. What is the optimal balance between outbreeding and inbreeding? Definitive answers to
this question are, as yet, not available. With rare exceptions, however, mating is avoided between
238 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

relatives with coeffecients of relatedness (“‘k”) greater than 0.25. What is the critical stage for
negative imprinting for inbreeding avoidance? van den Berghe (1983a) proposes a critical period
roughly between 2—6years of age. As critics point out, however, exact age ranges where
imprinting in children is most responsive to environmental stimuli have not been ascertained
(Bateson 1983; Lamb and Charnov 1983). It seems increasingly likely that humans are
susceptible to negative sexual imprinting, but more work is needed to identify the critical
developmental stages (Shepher 1971; Barash and Waterhouse 1981). Moreover, as pointed out
earlier, available evidence does not conclusively prove the existence of innate bias against incest.
We can only conclude that none of the available evidence rules out a genetic contribution, that
alternate interpretations are unsatisfactory, and that directed learning to avoid incest is strongly
apparant.
3. We emphasize intermarriage of females as a means of (1) increasing inclusive fitness and
(2) fostering alliances and contributing to groups as forces of selection. Intermarriage would be
most prevalent among individuals in geographically separated groups with some degree of
relatedness or common descent. Should it be undertaken to reduce conflict between these groups,
then inclusive fitness of all group members would likely be maintained or increased (however
distantly related they might be). Intermarriage between groups of completely unrelated
individuals would be far less likely unless such groups were threatened by a larger, third group.
Then, intermarriage may be undertaken to foster alliances to offset external threats. Observed
patterns of intermarriage are consistent with propositions of assortive mating, a term used by
Keith (1948), an anthropologist, to describe tendencies of people to prefer to mate with their own
kind. Indeed, a vast literature points to resistance to intermarriage between ethnic groups and
particularly hostile responses should a member of one ethnic group attack and rape a female of
another (Stevens and Swicewood 1987). Stember (1976) refers to problems of the latter sort as
“sexual racism” and interprets them as a primary “emotional barrier” to societal integration
today in countries as the United States.
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AUTHOR INDEX

Abley, M., 239 Bayat, M., 153, 240

Abolfathi, F., 239 Beard, M.S., 179, 180, 241
Abruzzi, W.S., 50, 60, 239 Benedict, R., 145, 241
Adam, H., 113, 147, 239 Bennigsen, A., 157, 165, 166, 241
Adams, R.N., 55, 239 Ben-Rafael, E., 150, 241
Alcock, J., 10, 30, 48, 239 Bergamini, D., 146, 241
Alcock, N.Z., 2, 239 Bernstien, I.S., 50, 241
Alexander, J.C., 169, 239 Berryman, J.E., 179, 241
Alexander, R.D., 27, 28, 31, 48, 53, 54, 55, Berte, N.A., 32, 241
56, 88, 195, 239 Bertram, B.C.R., 48 241
Anderson, B., 141, 143, 146, 240 Bickerton, D., 65, 82, 88, 241
Anderson, J, R., 240 Biglow, R., 58, 241
Andreski, S., 11, 240 Bixler, R.H., 79, 236, 241
Archdeacon, T, J., 160, 165, 240 Blainey, G., 11, 241
Argyle, M., 240 Blaustein, A.R., 38, 241
Arjomand, S., 152, 240 Blight, J.G., 198, 199, 201, 202, 209, 241
Armstrong, J.A., 137, 240 Blumenburg, G., 58, 241
Ascher, W., 240 Blumenfeld, Y., 199, 209, 241
Ashmore, R.D., 102, 240 Blumer, H., 225, 241
Avineri, S., 150, 240 Bock, M., 81, 82, 241
Axelrod, R., 182, 183, 184, 194, 240 Boone, J.L., 33, 241
Boorman, S.A., 25, 241
Baars, B.J., 63, 240 Bouchard, T.J.Jr., 37, 241
Baer, D., 50, 51, 53, 218, 240 Boulding, E., 4, 199, 203, 207, 241
Bakhash, S., 153, 240 Boulding, K., 2, 242
Banks, M., 203, 240 Bowlby, J., 78, 242
Banton, M., 212, 213, 226, 228, 240 Boyd, R., 98, 111, 242
Barash, D.P., 4, 10, 32, 38, 238, 240 Bradsher, H.S., 157, 242
Barkow, J.H., 32, 64, 227, 240 Brady, I.A., 66, 67
Barnard, C.J., 48, 69, 240 Brass, P.R., 108, 141, 242
Barth, F., 225, 240 Braun, D.P., 56, 242
Bates, D.G., 135, 240 Breuer, G., 31, 242
Bates, R.H., 181, 240 Breuilly, J., 140, 146, 242
Bateson, R., 238, 240 Brodie, B., 178, 195, 242
264 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Bromley, Y.V., 242 Don-Yehiya, E., 150, 151

Broxup, M., 165, 166, 242 Douglas, M., 88, 244
Brown, D.M., 143, 146, 242 Dow, J., 180, 244
Buck, R., 112, 242 Duchacek, I.D., 160, 244
Bueno de Mesquita, B., 212, 226, 228, 242 Dumond, D.E., 55, 244
Bugos, P., 24, 33, 52, 242 Dunbar, R.I.M., 244
Burg, S.L., 165, 242 Dunningan, J.F., 244
Burke, C., 242 Durham, W.H., 33, 34, 244
Bwig, S.L., 242 Dyson-Hudson, R., 49, 245

Campbell, B., 14, 49, 242 Edelman, G.N., 66, 87, 245
Campbell, D.T., 44, 52 Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., 4, 7, 10, 65, 245
Cantril, H., 242 Einstein, A., 2, 201, 245
Carneiro, R.L., 55, 111, 242 Elphick, R., 147, 245
Carr, A.T., 78, 243 Engels, F., 177
Carrere D‘Encausse, H., 165, 166, 243 Enloe, C.H., 4, 179, 180, 245
Carter, B.F., 9 Epstein, W., 195, 197, 245
Cartmill, M., 82, 243 Essock-Vitale, $.M., 32, 245
Chadwick, R.W., 175, 243 Eysenck, H.J., 65, 245
Chagnon, N.A., 24, 33, 52, 243
Chamah, A.M., 182 Falger, V.S.E., 11, 56, 245
Challiand, G., 156, 243 Farrar, L.L., 178.245
Charlesworth, B., 31, 243 Feldman, H., 88
Charlesworth, W.R., 13, 243 Ferrill, A., 55, 245
Charnoy, E.L., 238 Feshback, S., 200, 245
Cheung, L.M.Y., 169 Flannery, K., 55, 245
Chomsky, N., 10, 243 Fletcher, D.J.C., 32, 38, 39, 245
Claessen, H.J.M., 56, 57, 243 Flinn, M.V., 31, 32, 88, 245
Clausewitz, 11, 243 Flohr, H., 80, 81, 82, 83, 97, 245
Clem, R.S., 165, 243 Ford, W. S., 83, 88, 203, 245
Clotfelter, J., 200, 201, 209, 243 Foster, G.D., 178
Cohen, E.A., 179, 243 Foster, M.L., 4, 246
Cohen, R., 55, 243 Fowler, R.B., 192, 246
Coles, R., 243 Fox, R., 41, 66, 81, 82, 83, 89, 98, 99, 235,
Connor, W., 165, 169, 243 236, 245
Cooper, D., 243 Freedman, D.G., 32, 52, 246
Cottam, R.W., 152, 153, 154, 243 Freud, S., 201
Count, E.W., 66, 244 Fridell, W.M., 190, 246
Crapanzano, V., 148, 244 Fried, M.H., 55, 246
Creamer, W., 56 Friedman, J., 99
Curti, M.G., 163, 164, 244 Friedman, T.L., 246
Cusack, T.R., 175 Frolich, N., 214, 246
Fry, D.P., 25, 246
Daly, M., 24, 34, 244 Fuchs, L.H., 163, 164, 246
Davie, M.R., 43, 44, 244
Davies, J.C., 244 Gal, R., 150, 246
Debendetti, C., 195, 244 Gallup, G.G. Jr., 246
Decalo, S., 130, 244 Garcia, J., 65, 246
De Klerk, W.A., 147, 244 Garnett, J., 11, 246
Del Bosa, F.K., 102 Giliomee, H., 147
Demarest, W., 234, 235, 244 Ginsberg, B.E., 9, 246
Deutsch, K.W., 108, 140, 244 Gitelman, Z., 151, 246
Deutsch, M., 198, 244 Glossop, R.J., 137, 246
Dickman, M., 32, 244 Goldin-Meadow, S., 88, 246
Divale, W.T., 180, 244 Goldman, N.L., 180, 246
Author Index 265

Gondov, T., 50, 246 Jackman, R.W., 128, 130, 132, 249
Goodall, J., 52, 79, 246 Janowitz, M., 164, 249
Gould, J.L., 69, 70, 246 Jersey, B., 99, 249
Grafen, A., 31, 224, 247 Johnson, G.R., 91, 101, 112, 113, 118, 158,
Gray, C.S., 10, 175, 178, 246 249
Gray, J.A., 88, 246 Johnson, J.T., 19, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191,
Gray, J.P., 39, 246 249
Greeley, A., 4, 247 Johnson, T.H., 4, 117, 131, 132, 249
Greenberg, L., 38, 247 Jolly, R., 2, 249
Greenspoon, L., 189, 247 Jones F.C., 145, 249
Griesbach, M.F., 186 Jones, J.D., 186, 249
Griffiths, J.C., 156, 247 Joyce, A.A., 49, 60, 249
Grodzins, M., 164, 247
Kagan, D., 200, 208, 249
Hager, J, 65, 66, Kahane, M., 151, 249
Hall, B.W., 200, 247 Karklins, R., 165, 249
Hames, R.B., 32, 247 Karsten, P., 163, 249
Hamilton, D.L., 247 Keegan, J., 156, 249
Hamilton, W.D., 26, 29, 31, 41, 48, 66, Keenan, E.L., 165, 250
102, 183, 237, 247 Kehoe, A.B., 190, 250
Hammond, G.T., 11, 175, 247 Keil, F, C., 250
Hannon, M., 225, 247 Keith, A., 238, 250
Hardestt, D.L., 49, 247 Kennedy, J.G., 10, 250
Harner, M.J., 55, 247 Kennedy, M.D., 190, 250
Harris, M., 180 Kerr, W., 167, 250
Hass, J., 56 Kitcher, P., 223, 250
Hayden, B., 60, 247 Klare, M.T., 199, 250
Hechter, M., 169, 213, 225, 226, 228, 247 Klein, R.G., 60
Hertz, F., 137, 247 Klinger, E., 81, 82
Hexham, I.F., 147, 248 Knelman, F., 2, 250
Hill, R.F., 135 Knorr, K., 10, 195, 250
Hillgarth, J.N., 190, 248 Koelling, R.A., 65
Hinsley, R.H., 140, 248 Koestler, A., 1, 250
Hirschfeld, L.A., 181, 248 Kohn, H., 250
Hirschleifer, J., 75, 184, 194, 248 Konner, M., 4, 66, 69, 76, 108, 131, 134,
Hodgson, G., 75, 248 140, 250
Holldobler, B., 38, 248 Kosaka, M., 144, 250
Holloway, R.L., 79, 248 Kothari, R., 250
Holm, J., 180, 248 Krasner, M.A., 200, 250
Holm, T., 163, 248 Krebs, J., 38, 250
Holmes, W.G., 39, 248 Krone, R.M., 250
Holsti, K.J., 248 Kumanoy, V. A., 166, 250
Holt, R.R., 201, 248 Kunkel, J.H., 111, 250
Horowitz, D.L., 4, 125, 134, 135, 150, 248 Kuper, L., 178, 250
Howlett, C.F., 196, 248 Kurland, J.A., 27, 32, 38, 250
Huang, C., 235
Hughes, A.L., 32, 248 Lamb, D., 125, 250
Hurlich, M.G., 248 Lamb, M.E., 238, 250
Hyman, A., 156, 248 Lambert, J.C., 175, 251
Lancaster, C., 181, 251
Ifeka, C., 131, 248 Lancaster, B., 181
Ike, B.C., 96, 103, 248 Lang, 3s,, 200
Irons, W., 236, 248 Lanternari, V., 44, 251
Isaac, H.R., 100, 112, 248 Laughlin, C.D., 66, 67, 251
Isaac, G.L., 58, 249 Leach, E.R., 111, 251
266 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

Lease, G., 189, 251 Miles, W.F.S., 253

Lees, S.H.;, 181, 251 Mithchenson, R., 137, 253
Legters, L.H., 178, 251 Momauezi, A., 3, 54, 253
Leifer, E., 219, 251 Montagu, A., 3, 54, 253
Leigh, G.K., 251 Moodley, K., 113
Lemercier-Quelquejay, C., 157, 251 Morgan, C.J., 31, 253
Levine, R.A., 44, 52, 251 Morris, R., 7, 32, 253
Levi-Strauss, C., 88, 234, 251 Murdock, G.P., 253
Levitt, P.R., 25 Murray, D., 154, 253
Lewellen, T.C., 46, 55, 57, 105, 251 Mylander, C., 88
Lewis, K.N., 251 Myrdal, A., 18, 253
Lewontin, R.C., 40, 251
Liebman, C.S., 150, 151, 251 Naby, E., 157, 254
Lifton, R.J., 178, 251 Najmabadi, A., 153, 254
Navari, C., 169, 254
Lindauer, N., 38
Eipset, S...229, 291 Nelson, R.R., 214, 254
Loehlin, J.C., 37, 251 Neuman, G.G., 9, 254
Lorenz, K., 4, 6, 65, 88, 251 Nevitte, N., 140
EumsdenG.J:, 7150/2573, 075 95975 Lil Newell, N.P., 156, 157, 254
236, 251 Newell, R.S., 156, 157
Neuman, G.G., 254
McCabe, J., 234, 235, 252 Nichols, R.C., 37
McDougall, W., 65, 252 Nincic, M., 175, 254
McEachron, D.L., 50, 51, 53, 218, 252 North, R.C., 10
McGraw, K.M., 200 Norton, H.H., 181, 254
McGue, M., 37
McGuire, M., 32 O’Brien, W.V., 187, 254
McKenna, J.C., 252 O’Hara, R.K., 38
McNamara, R., 252 Olorunsola, V.A., 123, 131
Maclver, D.N., 252 Oppenheimer, J., 214
Magnus, R.H., 157, 252 Orridge, A.W., 142, 169, 254
Maine, H., 121, 252 Ottenberg, S., 4, 254
March, J.G., 74, 252 Otterbein, K.F., 5, 6, 35, 194, 254
Margolis, H., 252 Otterbein, C.S., 35
Marler, P., 69, 70 Parming, T., 169, 254
Martin, F.S., 60, 252 Peleg, I., 150, 254
Martin, M., 157, 252 Peleg, S., 150
Marvin, R.S., 79, 252 Perlmutter, P., 203, 254
Marx; Ki01768.1777.252 Peterson, S.A., 65, 96, 200, 254
Masters, R.D., 27, 87, 91, 194, 252 Pfeiffer, J.E., 45, 57, 254
Matthews, K.A., 252 Philip, A.B., 169, 254
Maxwell, M., 252 Phillips, C.S., 124, 207, 210, 254
Mayes, A., 80, 253 Piaget, J., 65, 254
Maynard-Smith, J., 27, 183, 253 Plog, S., 56
Mayr, E., 253 Plutchik, R., 98, 255
MazritsAc 17, 1205121122, 12351335 Powers, T., 2, 255
147, 253 Price, BL. 195
Mead, M., 10, 253 Price (GRE oil, 255
Mehler, J., 253 Prysby, C.L., 210
Melotti, U., 44, 78, 253
Merkl, P.H., 190, 253 Rapoport, A., 182, 255
Meyer, P., 111, 253 Rawkins, P., 140, 255
Michener, C.D., 32, 38 Reid, C.J Jr., 255
Michod, R.E., 31, 253 Reynolds, V., 5, 27, 41, 51, 52, 79, 189,
Midlandsky, M., 11, 253 255
Author Index 267

Richardson, L.F., 174, 255 Smith, E.A., 49

Richardson, P.J., 90, 111 Smith, G.E., 257
Rindos, D., 111, 255 Smith, P.K., 78, 79, 257
Rockett, L.R., 165, 255 Smith, T.C., 258
Rogers, C.R., 198, 255 Smooha, S., 150, 258
Rogoswki, R., 169, 255 Snidal, D., 184, 258
Roi, Y., 165, 255 Snyder, L.L., 140, 150, 152, 165, 258
Rokken, S., 225 Southwick, C., 79, 258
Roper, M.K., 4, 255 Sowell, T., 164, 258
Roper, T.J., 69, 255 Spencer, H., 44, 258
Ross, M.H., 36, 255 - Staddon, J.E.R., 68, 69, 258
Rothchild, D., 121, 255 Stegeng, J.A., 188, 258
Roy, PK, 255 Stein, H.F., 135, 258
Runbenstein, R.A., 4 Stember, C.H., 238, 258
Ruse, M., 6, 32, 255 Stevens, G., 238, 258
Rushton, J.D., 32, 37, 38, 256 Stokes, G., 101, 258
Russell, F.H., 185, 256 Stone, J., 133, 258
Russell, R.A., 78, 79, 256 Suchodolski, B., 195, 258
Sumner, W.G., 44, 258
Russell, R.J.H., 38, 256
Suomi, S.J., 258
Rustad, M., 180, 256
Swicewood, G., 238
Safran, W., 135, 256 Symmons-Symonolewicz, K., 37, 140, 258
Sahlins, M.D., 34, 40, 55, 60, 234, 256 Taagepera, R., 200, 258
Saywell, S., 256
Tagari, J., 153, 258
Schneider, A.J., 163, 164, 256 Taheri, A., 153, 258
Schlesinger, A.Jr., 137, 256 Talmon, Y., 235, 258
Schmookler, A.B., 56, 184, 256 Tanner, R.E.S., 189
Schubert, G., 111, 256 Taylor, J., 146, 259
Schurer-Necker, E., 82, 256 Taylor, P.S., 203, 259
Segal, N.L., 32, 37, 256 Tennant, N., 31
Seger, J., 31, 256 Terry, W., 163, 259
Seligman, M., 65, 66, 256 Thompson, L., 148, 259
Seliktar, O., 150, 256 Thomson, R., 80, 81, 259
Service, E.R., 55, 60, 256 Tidy, M., 122, 147, 259
Shafir, J., 151, 256 Tiger, L., 255, 259
Shapiro, M., 25, 256 Tinbergen, N., 65, 259
Shepher, J., 235, 238, 257 Tinker, H., 259
Sherman, P.W., 38, 39, 257 Tiryaklan, E.A., 140
Sick, G., 152, 154, 257 Tivey, L., 169, 259
Sigelman, S., 257 Tonnesman, W., 101, 259
Silk, J.B., 34, 257 Trachtenberg, M., 199, 259
Simon, H.A., 74, 87, 88, 257 Trivers, R.L., 41, 259
Simon, M.D., 190 Tsurumi, S., 146, 259
Simowitz, R.L., 195, 257 Tullock, G., 175, 213, 216, 217, 218, 259
Singer, J.D., 1, 3, 18, 195, 196, 257 Turke, P.W., 32, 66, 86, 259
Sivard, R.L., 6, 18, 196, 257 Turner, J.H., 228, 259
Skalnik, P., 56 Tyler, S:A., 259
Skinner, B.F., 68, 257 Tyler, T.R., 200, 259
Slater, R.O., 131 Uzoigwe, G.N., 117, 260
Slukin, W., 72, 257
Small, M., 3, 209, 257 Valenta, J., 155, 260
Smethurst, R.J., 145, 257 Valzelli, L., 38, 9, 260
Smith, A.D., 4, 97, 108, 137, 140, 142, 169, van den Berghe, P.L., 10, 41, 102, 108, 111,
Zt 112, 123, 124, 125, 126, 134, 140, 143,
Smith, A.K., 132 235, 237, 238, 260
268 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

van der Dennen, J.M.G., 44, 78, 79, 81, White, M.J., 200
137, 260 White, R.K., 2, 99, 100, 261
van der Merve, 147 White, S., 166, 261
Van Gulick, R., 111, 260, Willhoite, F.H., Jr., 58, 261
Vayda, A.P., 50, 260 Williams, C.H., 141, 261
Venclova, T., 260 Williams, G.C., 55, 261
Vine, I., 44, 112, 260 Williams, T.R., 111, 261
Vining, D.Jr., 42,260 Wilson, M., 24, 34
von Clausewitz, C., 11, 260 Wilson, E.O., 7, 9, 32, 43, 44, 49, 71, 72, 73,
von Schilcher, F., 31, 260 87, 95, 96, 97, 111, 236, 261
von Weizacker, C.F., 1, 196, 260 Wimbush, S.E., 165, 261
Wind, J., 12, 13, 31, 261
Waddington, C.H., 68, 260 Winter, S.G., 214
Walter, E.B., 121, 260 Wolf, A.P., 235, 261
Waltz, K., 195, 261 Wright, Q., 10, 262
Walzer, M., 261 Wynne-Edwards, V.C., 25, 262
Wang, S.Y., 88, 261
Waterhouse, M., 238 Yarnolinsky, A., 178, 262
Watson, J.B., 65, 261 Yates, J., 96, 262
Webster, D., 55, 261 Young, N.I., 208, 262
Wehr, P., 200, 261 Young, S.B., 164, 166, 262,
Weil, S., 151, 261 Young, W.L., 163, 165, 262
Welch, C.E.Jr., 119, 132, 133, 134, 261
Welsh, D., 147, 261 Zaslavsky, V., 166, 262
Welsh, D., 4, 261 Zeiter, G., 196
Westermark, E., 234, 261 Zolberg, A.R., 130, 262
White, L., 65, 261
SUBJECT INDEX

adaptation, 15 assumptions in Genetic Seeds of Warfare,

adaptive rationality, 74—5; decision rules of 28-9, 59-60, 84-5, 109-10, 127, 142-3,
thumb and, 75 161-2
Afghanistan, 154—7
balance of power, 45, 53-8; assumptions
Africa, 117-35; coups d’etat, 117-35;
about, 59-60; ethnocentrism and, 45-7;
kinship, 120-7; post colonial, 125-8; pre- evidence supporting, 54-6; Alexander’s
colonial, 120-2; societal evolution, 55; hypothesis, 54—5; nationalism and, 139;
statehood and, 122-5 outbreeding and, 236—7; resource
Afrikaners, 147-8 competition and, 45—7; stages of, 54-5
aggression, 6-11; anatomical correlates Basques, 138
of, 8; brain and, 9; capacity through natural biology: modes of reasoning, 13
selection, 6; debates about, 7—8; functions boundary maintenance, 83, 89
of, 9-11; innateness of, 6; nature of, 6—9; Bounded rationality, 74, 226, 228; empirical
neurochemical correlates of, 8; resource certainty of, 75
competition and, 9; wolves and, 6 brain:causes of growth, 58; competition and,
altruism, 24-31; defined, 26; generalized 58; emotions and, 83; empty organism
reciprocity and, 27; kin selection and, 27— debate, 66; evolution and, 15; language
31; meaning of, 24-6; nepotistic, 27, 32, capacity 82; neurochemical correlates with
41, 78; reciprocal, 28, 41 aggression, 8
amity towards in—groups 23-42; boundary British colonization, 123-4
maintenance and, 83, 89; directed learning cannibalism, 7
and, 76-85; language and emotions, 81-4 Catholic Bishops, 186—7
anthropology, 4, 24, 56; altruism theory, 24; central tendencies in evolutionary theory, 17,
peace research and, 4; war as cause of 61, 73
social evolution, 56 chiefdoms:evolution of, 55
Anti—Ballistic Missile Treaty, 199 chimpanzees, 51; group fissioning behavior,
Apartheid, 148 51; peacefulness of, 51-2; violence among,
Arabs, 150 52
archaeology: discoveries charting human Christ as Divine Warrior, 189-90
evolution, 14; war as cause of social christianity and war, 189-92; ethnocentrism
evolution, 56 and, 189; just war tradition and, 185-8
arms race models, 174—5 classification, 81-4, 88
270 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

coefficients of relatedness, 29-30, 228-31 identification mechanism and, 103;

cognition, 63, 65—8; channeled, 69-70, 226; language and, 82
heuristics and, 97-8; identification environment: behavior and, 9; effects during
mechanism and, 95-100; innately biased, deglaciation period, 49; epigenesis and,
72-3; language, classification and 65-86; factor in identification mechanism,
emotions, 81—5; mental maps and, 105-7; 93-5; gene co-evolution with, 15
neurobiological underpinnings, 66-7; epigenesis, 63, 65-89, 714; assumptions
phenotypic traits and, 73; reification and, about, 84—5; biases at work, 71-4;
95-7 bounded rationality and, 74; empirical
colonialism, 117—28; British, 123-4; French, certainty of, 76; epigenetic rules, 71-2;
123-4; nation-state building, 118; equipotentiality principle and, 68;
statehood and, 22—5 identification mechanism and, 93;
communications theory, 140-1 illustrated, 69—71; learning theory and,
cooperative behavior, 23-42, 182-5; 68; origins, 68—71; view of development,
intermarriage and, 238, origins of, 27-8; 69, 76-85
reciprocal altruism, 28, 41 epigenetic rules, 71—2; empirical certainty of,
correlates of war project, 3, 196 75; incest avoidance, 72; xenophobia, 72
cost/benefit framework: ethnic conflict and,
equipotentiality principle, 68
211-31; identification mechanism and,
Eritreans, 138
93-5; inclusive fitness theory and, 212—
ethnic conflict, 4, 11; cost/benefit framework
31; kin selection and, 29-30;
of, 211-31; ecological model, 225;
methodology, 40, 212-31
coups d’etat, 117-35; CIA and, 134; propensity for, 231; rational choice theory,
economic factors and, 130-2; ethnically 226; reactive ethnicity model, 225
inspired, 128-32; Marxist interpretation, ethnicity: African, 117—35; coups d’etat and,
117; multipartyism and, 128-30; number 117-35; cultural ethnic groups defined,
in Africa, 118; secondary determinants of, 108; ethnic markers, 97; multiethnic
130-2; social mobility and, 128-30; societies, 108; nucleus ethnic groups, 16
statistical analysis of 128-32 ethnocentrism, 16, 44—7, 228; cause of
cultural ethnic group, 108, 113; nationalism warfare, 44-6; universality of, 44;
and, 138 primitives and, 44
culture: war and, 4 ethny, 125
ethology, 7, 9; causes of war and, 10;
Darwin: conflict and, 6; egotistic fitness and, European influence on psychology, 65;
26 studies on learning theory, 68—9
death as rational strategy, 221-3 ethnographic studies, 32, 36
decision rules of thumb, 75 evolution: cooperation and, 23-42, 182-5;
deterrence philosophy, 1, 187 genetic, 15
directed learning, 68—71, 76-85; examples, evolutionary approach: adaptation and, 16;
76-85; incest avoidance and, 233-5 binary classification, 81; central tendencies
ecology: niche studies, 49-50; principle of and, 17, 61; disregarded by psychology,
competitive exclusion, 50; resource 65; language and emotions, 82-3; study of
competition and, 9, 45-7, 49 warfare and, 15
economic development: foreign aid and, 5; evolutionary biology: altruism theory, 25-6;
military expenditures and, 5; poor country genetic evolution, 15; research on conflict
debt and, 4 and, 10
economists: altruism theory, 24 evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), 31, 183
education and peace, 203-4 extinction of species, 45
Einstein on war, 2, 201
enmity toward out—groups, 43-64; fear: nuclear annihilation prospects, 207;
boundary maintenance, 83, 89; channeled strangers and, 11, 67, 72, 78-81; ultimate
cognition and, 76-85; ethnocentrism and, causal analysis and, 11-13
43-44; language and emotions, 81-4; fissioning and competition, 48-53;
weapons development and, 53 chimpanzees, 52; humans, 52
emotions, 81-4, 98-100; biology of, 82; French colonialism, 123-4
classification and, 81; hot versus cold, 99; Freud on war, 201
Subject Index 271

gender in warfare, 179-80 reification in, 95—7; religion in, 98; South
genes: altruism and, 23-31; gene—culture Africa, 146-8; universality of 94; USA,
coevolution, 71-3, 94-5; genetic 162-5; USSR, 165-7; variables in 102-5;
evolution, 15; gene pool, 10; genetic inbreeding—outbreeding strategies, 233-8
relatedness, 27, 38; inclusive fitness and, incest avoidance, 72, 89, 233-8
23-42; kin selection and, 27-31 inclusive fitness, 2342; altruism and, 24,
genetic determinism, 6, 13, 17; identification 26—7; assumptions about, 28-9;
mechanism and, 94—5; reductionism and, calculation of, 29-30; central theorem of
192-4 behavioral biology, 31; coefficients of
game theory, 182-4 relatedness, 30; conflict avoidance and,
genetic relatedness, 23-42; intertribal 50-2; cost—benefit framework and, 211—
warfare and, 34-7; kin recognition, 37-9; 31; defined, 26, 30; ethnocentrism and,
twin studies, 37; Yanomamo ax fights and, 44-6; evidence supporting, 31-7;
334 evolutionary stable strategy, 31;
genotype—phenotype development, 67 identification mechanism and, 93-5;
group selection theory, 25; competitive intertribal warfare and, 35—7; kin
process and, 25 recognition and, 38—9; kin selection, 27—
groups: anthropomorphised, 96; conflict 31; logic of patriotism, 159-61; logic of
avoidance and, 50-2; costs to membership nationalism, 140; natural selection and,
in, 48; defense against predators, 47;
26; preferred group membership and, 63;
primitive war and, 34-5; problems
fissioning and competition, 48—53; forces
measuring, 39-40; recognition markers
of selection, 45; ingroup amity, 43-64;
and, 105; social cement for groups, 24;
leaders reified, 96; migration and
twin studies, 37; Yanomamo ax fights and,
competition among, 48—53; out-group 33
enmity, 43-64; preferred membership in, infanticide, 181; lions and, 32
63; problematic assumptions about, 226— innate capacities: coevolutionary process, 68;
7; psychology of, 43-7, 77 culture learning 67; fear of strangers, 11—
13; language learning, 67; regularities in
Hausa—Fulani of Nigeria, 124 mental development, 66; war proneness
heuristics, 97-8; binary classification and, and, 6; warfare and, 192-4; xenophobia
97; riefication and, 112 and, 11, 66, 67
Holocaust, 150 insect behavior, 32; altruism and inclusive
Homo sapiens: hunter—gatherer behavior, 3— fitness of, 32
4; legacy of, 21; peace among, 3 interdisciplinary approach, 3; proximate
human biogram, 67 versus ultimate causes in, 11-14
Human Relations Area Files, 35 Intermediate—Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,
hunter—gatherers: identification mechanism 199
and, 94; peace and 3-4 Inuit, 138
Iran, 151-4
Ibo of Nigeria, 124 Iraq, 153
identification mechanism, 63, 92—113; Islam, 151-4, 155-6
affective intensity in, 103; Afghanistan, Israel, 138, 148-51
154-7; assumptions about, 109-10;
cognitive elements, 95-8; defined, 93-5; Japan, 163, 190; nationalism in, 143-6
deterministic status of, 94; emotive force, Judaism, 148-51; zionism and, 190
98-100; gene—culture coevolution and, just war theory, 185-8
94; group bonding and, 103-4; group size
and, 103; heuristics of, 97-8; homeland K-selected species, 60; balance of power and.
and, 102; Iran, 151—4; Israel, 148-51; 45-7
Japan, 143-6; language and, 102; mental Khomeini, 151-3
maps of, 105—7; model of, 101-5; kin recognition, 37—9; ability to detect
nationalism and, 140; patriotism and, genetic similarity in frogs, bees, birds, 38;
137-62; peace and, 204-6; phenotypes caveats about, 39-40; humans and, 38-9;
and, 102; preferred group membership, mechanisms involved, 39; sweat bee and,
107-9; recognition markers in, 102-8; 38
272 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

kin selection, 27—31; calculation of, 29-30; nepotism, 27, 32, 41, 78
coefficients of relatedness, 30, 228-31; neurology, 8, 67; human biogram, 67
ethnic conflict model and, 227; evidence neuronal group selection, 86
supporting, 31—7; evolutionary stable new world society, 202-3
strategy, 31; true altruism and, 26; Nicaragua, 203
Yanomamo ax fights and, 33 niche, 49—50, 60; learning constraints and,
kinship: African, 120—6; altruism and, 24-6; 69
language and emotions involved, 81-4; nuclear war: deterrence policy and, 1;
myth of common descent and, 125-6 doomsday scenarios, 1—2
!Kung bushmen of the Kalahari, 94 Nigeria, 102, 123, 124
Kurds, 138 nucleus ethnic groups: definition of, 16;
emotions and, 98—100; epigenesis and,
language, 81-4; classifying enemies, 81; 85-6; ethnocentrism and, 45-7; heuristics
biology of, 82 and, 95—7; identification mechanism and,
learning biases, 63, 65-89; biases at work, 934; reification and, 97-8
71-4; debate concerning, 66—7 Nuer tribe, 55, 102
learning theory, 68—9; constraints and, 69—
70; directed learning, 68—71 patrilineal societies: feuding and, 35
lion infanticide, 32 patriotic consciousness, 159-61, 164
Luhya of Kenya, 125 patriotism, 2, 16, 137-62; assumptions
about, 161—2; ethnic conflict and, 2;
male supremist complex, 180—2 inclusive fitness logic of, 159-61; USA
Marxism, 176—7; Afghanistan and, 156; and, 108, 162—5; USSR and, 108, 165-7
theory, 117 Pavlovian conditioning, 65
mental maps, 105—7 peace, 195—210; balance of power and, 56;
military history: causes of war and, 10 bottom up approaches to, 199-201;
moral paradox of war, 185-8 Catholic Bishops and, 186—7; education’s
Mundurucu of Brazil, 35 impact on, 203-4; infrequency of, 3, 208;
murder, 7 initiatives toward, 16; initiatives to change
Murphy’s laws, 1 thinking about, 201-4; institute in USA,
military expenditures, 5; economic 208; institute in Canada, 208; movement,
development and, 5 199-201, 210; new approach to, 204-6;
models of ethnic conflict, 211—31; criticism peaceful cultures, 3; people-power, 199—
of, 223-5; death as rational strategy, 221— 201; research expenditures on, 2, 5, 207-8
3; inclusive fitness component, 218-21; pecking orders, 6, 10; Lorenz and, 6; wolves
social time preference rate and, 228; and, 6
Tullock extension, 216-18 Persia, 152
myth of common descent: African kinship phenotypes: kin selection and, 28
and, 125-4; identification mechanism and, phenotypic traits, 73; heuristics and, 97;
102; nationalism and, 142 mathching, 113
phobias, 71-4; incest avoidance, 71, 233-7;
nationhood, 137-42; Africa and, 121-5; xenophobia, 71, 76—81
defined, 141-2; kinship and 122-3 physiology: aggression and, 9
national consciousness, 141-2 polygyny and feuding, 36—7
nationalism, 2, 16, 137-62; Afghanistan, population growth, 10, 49; early humans
154—7; African, 117-35; assumptions and, 49
about, 142; inclusive fitness logic of, 140; predator-prey relationships, 6
Japan, 143-6; modernization theory and, primitives: ethnocentrism and, 43-4; war
135, 225-6; South Africa, 146-8 and, 3, 23
nationalistic mobilization: stages of, 138 principle of competitive exclusion, 51
natural selection: aggression and, 6, Darwin prisoner’s dilemma, 182—4
and, 6 propensity for warfare, 2—6, 43-7; ultimate
nature/nurture, 66, 174; false dichotomies, causes, 11-14
66 ; proximate causes, 11-14; groups as forces of
Nazism, 149 selection, 45, 64
Subject Index
273

psychology: channelled cognition, 65-89; tribes: formation and organization, 45—7

directed learning examples, 68—71, 76-85; Tsembaga Maring of New Guinea, 35
Einstein’s challenge, 201; empty organism typologies: epigenesis and warfare
doctrine, 65; epigenetic rules and, 71-2; propensities in expanding groups, 85-6;
genetic factors and, 65; interactionist sociobiology as a science, 13; sociopolitical
school, 202; pathology in superpower systems, 46; state development, 57
relations, 198-9; predispositions, 63; twin studies, 32, 37; altruism and, 32;
ultimate utilities, 64 dizygotic twins, 37; monozygotic twins, 37
rationality, 74-5, 226-7
ultimate causes, 11—14, 21; behavioral
rational choice theory, 74—5, 226
strategies and, 23
recognition markers, 102-8; affective
United Nations, 197-8; charter of, 197;
intensity of, 103; Afghanistan, 154-7;
Declaration on Peace, 208; new approach
congruence of, 102; inclusive fitness and,
to peace, 2-4-5, 209; peace brokering,
105; Iran, 151-4; Israel, 148-51; Japan,
197-8; World Plans of Action and, 5
143-6; language, 102, 104; myth of
USA, 162-5; civil war, 179; patriotism in,
common descent and, 102; nationalism
108, 165—7; world court and, 184
and, 141-2; phenotypes, 102, 106;
USSR, 165-7; patriotism in, 108, 165-7
religion, 102, 106; South Africa, 146-8
universal love and warfare, 190
reification, 95—7, 111, 112;
anthropomorphize, 96; fatherland/ Vietnam war, 164, 207; logic of patriotism
motherland, 96; heuristics and, 112 and, 169
religion, 98, 141, 188—92; Christ as Divine war: agriculture and, 3; arms races and,
Warrior, 189-90; Christ's teachings, 191— 174-5; balance of power and, 45, 53-8;
2; facilitator of ethnocentrism, 199-202; causes of, 10, 173-94; christianity and,
identification mechanism and, 98; Islam, 189-92; correlates of war project, 1, 3,
151-4, 155-6; war and, 189-92; Zionism, 196; culture as determinant, 4; ethnically
190 inspired, 4, 11, 117—35; ethnocentrism as
re—selected species, 60 cause, 44—5; frequency of, 195; functions
rationality, 745; adaptive, 75; bounded, 74, of, 11; game theory and, 182-4; gender
87 and, 179-80; humanity’s propensity for,
resource competition, 9; competitive 2; incest avoidance and, 233-8; innate
exclusion principle, 49; effects on group behaviors and, 6, 192-4; intertribal, 37;
psychology, 45—7; impact on brain size, just war theory and, 185-8; legality of, 10;
58; mating and, 9; niches and, 49 male supremist complex and, 180-2;
Sikhs, 138 Marxism/communism and, 176-7;
social time preference rate, 228 military—industrial complex and, 177-9;
societal evolution: balance of power and, 54; moral paradox of, 185-8; nationalism
evolution of cooperation and, 23-42, 182— and, 137-62; new world society and, 202—
5; multiethnic societies, 108 3; plunder, 43, 236; prehistoric, 55;
sociobology, 12-14; ethnocentrism, 44-5; primitive, 3, 23, 34-5, 43-4, 179, 233;
explanatory paradigm of, 12; modes of prisoner’s dilemma and, 182—4; proneness,
reasoning, 13 2-6, 43-7; psychopathology of, 202;
sociopolitical systems, 45—8; typology of, 46 sexual deprivation and, 181; societal
South Africa, 146-8 approval of, 10; universal love and, 190;
sovereignty, 139 warrior tradition, 117, 120-1, 133;
star wars, 23, 199 women and, 43
states: chronology of development, 57; warrior tradition, 117, 120-1, 133
evolution of, 55; European, 122, 169; weapons, 53; brain size and, 58; evolution
nation-states, 138—9; statehood, 106, 122 of, 53
statement on violence, 192-3 Westermark hypothesis, 234—5
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, 195 women in war, 179-80
Strategic Defense Initiative, 199
xenophobia, 13, 66, 72, 76, 78-81, 228;
termite colonies, 32 boundary maintenance and, 83, 89;
274 GENETIC SEEDS OF WARFARE

cognition and, 80; epigenesis and, 71; Yoruba of Nigeria, 124

evidence on, 79; innate behavior, 66, 72;
weapons and, 53 zoological research, 7
Yanomamo: altruism and, 25; fissioning and Zimbabwe, 180
conflict among, 52; inclusive fitness and, Zulu, 55
33-4; war among, 22, 33-4
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