Recollecting Professor Rummel

8/8/2019 Recollecting Professor Rummel

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/recollecting-professor-rummel 1/18

Recollecting Professor Rummel

Page | 1

Rudolph Rummel

RECOLLECTING PROFESSOR RUMMEL Waging War to Make Peace Series

By David Arthur Walters

Waging war to make peace brings to mind Professor Rudolph Rummel, retiredUniversity of Hawaii political scientist, leading academic proponent of waging war tomake peace, and a supposed candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The esteemed conservative professor was an ardent supporter of President Bush’smilitant policies in respect to the second Bush War on Iraq. Samples of ProfessorRummel’s work, including his Never Again Series of six novels - War and Democide

Never Again, Nuclear Holocaust Never Again, Reset Never Again, Red Terror Never Again,Genocide Never Again, and Never Again - may be freely viewed on a University of Hawaiihosted website.

The Never Again Series “are a what-if, alternative history,” he explains. “Two loversare sent back in time to 1906 with modern weapons and 38 billion 1906 dollars. Theirmission is to prevent the rise of fascism and communism, avert the major 20thCentury wars, including World Wars I and II, and forestall such democides as thoseby Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.”




Page | 2

“Above all, these books are a story about love versus power -- the love of dedicated warriors for each other and for humanity and who risk their lives and each other intheir deadly struggle against power, unaware that: unseen, Love’s dark foe, Power, likea deadly plague, infests, subverts, kills. Of course, throughout the novels there is my message… about the sheer magnitude of democide, and the democratic peace thatunderlies President Bush's foreign policy as the solution to democide and war.”

“Famine Through Democratic Freedom , a factual supplement to the Never AgainSeries…also provides an essential understanding of the theoretical and historical basisof President George Bush's democratic peace foreign policy - his Forward Strategy of Freedom. It argues philosophically, and from international law, that individualfreedom is the most basic human right. This, and that freedom is a natural desire of allpeople, would be enough to justify freedom for everyone. But, the major substance of Never Again goes far beyond these justifications to establish that freedom is also a

Moral Good. One Moral Good is that liberal democracies, those whose people areindividually free with secure civil and political rights and liberties, don't make war oneach other, as President Bush has stated correctly in support of his foreign policy.

Another is that their democratic governments do not murder them. And a third is thattheir internal political violence is minimal compared to non-democracies. All thisalone would make freedom the foremost Moral Good. But this book also shows thatfree people -- democracies -- never have famines, and that freedom is an engine of thegreatest wealth and development among nations. In short, to the Moral Imperative,"No people should ever suffer war, democide, famine, and mass impoverishment, no,never again," this book proves that fostering individual freedom is the practical way to

assure this.”

Professor Rudolf Eucken (the Nobel Laureate whose patriotism and denial of German atrocities during the Great War put him at odds with the Christian love hepreached) and Professor Rummel look somewhat alike, especially when bearded, butthey appear to differ greatly in their philosophical approaches to waging wars to make

world peace. While Rudolf Eucken relied religiously on spiritual intuition, which may justify waging war to pacify the world, Rudolph Rummel scientifically counts on thestatistical analysis of objective events that led him to conclude that democracies, as hedefines them, do not wage war upon one another, and that might justify waging war

on “democidal” governments to establish world peace, for democidal governmentsare non-democratic.

Professor Rummel has defined ‘democide’ as the murder of people by their owngovernments. Democide includes genocide, political murders, deaths due to abuse inconcentrations camps, and deaths due to deportations. He defines ‘murder’ in civilterms, as the reckless and wanton wasting of life. In that context murder would still be




Page | 3

murder even if it were defined as lawful killing in legal terms according to the normlaid down by the democidal government. Since people presumably do not like to havethemselves or their relatives murdered and maimed and their property destroyed,democratic governments are unlikely to engage in the democide that has, at leastaccording to his growing count, 262 million victims over the last century. We recallthat before President Bush sent troops to wage a pre-emptive war in Iraq, wheremany thousands of them have since been maimed or have died in battled, he chargedSaddam Hussein with the barbarity of “killing his own people.”

If only all states and their governments were democratic and culturally engaged withone another, as democratic nations are bound to be, perpetual peace and prosperity – they go hand in hand – would supposedly be the general rule. Statistical studies doshow that the degree of democracy is a good gauge of prosperity and generalhappiness of the people. Democracy as defined by Professor Rummel is naturally the

best of all democracies, of which the United States is exemplary: broadly speaking, itis a well-established constitutional government of laws that subjects the governmentitself to the laws, affords the broadest of franchises and a secret ballot, and guaranteesequal rights of free speech, assembly, and religion.

Professor Rummel’s research into the period 1816-2005 indicated that non-democracies waged 205 wars between themselves, that 166 wars were waged betweendemocracies and non-democracies, and that there were no wars at all betweendemocracies as he defined them. One might reasonably conclude that, to establishpeace on Earth, all militant and/or democidal non-democratic governments should be

liquidated.

We may observe that the peace between liberal states, however, has been only among themselves, i.e. a separate peace, and liberal states are in fact notorious for theirbelligerence in respect to non-liberal or right-wing authoritarian states. Still, the liberalaggression is praised rather than condemned because the causes fought for, thepursuit of property and happiness and the like, were the better ones because mostpopular, especially the cause of liberal democracy. And the data shows that liberals donot fight amongst themselves because they are too busy making a profit off oneanother under their freer form of organized greed. Domestic peace is assured

provided that poor slobs believe they have the opportunity get filthy rich. Democraticimperialism wages war to end all wars, to make peace. The collateral damage, eventhough the numbers of wounded, maimed and dead given the superior technology of liberal democracies may far exceed the damage wrought by brutal dictators, justifiesthe peaceful end. Nonetheless, once everyone recognizes the virtues of liberaldemocracy and contracts to establish and maintain it, perpetual peace is assured,




Page | 4

wherefore the human race shall rest in peace. Let us then wage war to make the only peace worth having, liberal democratic peace incorporated.

The German Reich was liquidated and a democratic Germany now enjoys relativepeace and prosperity. The Second World War was a vindictive continuation of theGreat War upon the failure of the weak Weimar democracy. Professor Euckenpublicly blamed the Great War on Anglo-Saxon greed and egotism, which gave theparanoid Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose mother was, ironically, Queen Victoria’s daughter,just cause to defend Germany with pre-emptive war. The Kaiser, an honorary Britishadmiral and yachtsman, felt Germany was being landlocked and encircled by greedy enemies; he envisioned that Germany’s future could be realized by going to sea.

A century later, Professor Rummel supported the paranoid U.S. President’s pre-emptive war on Iraq; that alone suffices to make the America professor infamous in

the eyes of the Bush-hating world – the President felt that the United States of America, the purported leader of Western civilization upon which an attack wastherefore an affront to civilization per se, and its interests abroad, were being infiltrated by Islamist terrorists from abroad, who were hell bent on destroying the

American Way of Life, that is, the peculiarly American culture, the epitome of Western civilization.

Thorsten Veblen, in On the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation , remarked onthe importance of one’s own brand of culture:

“It may broadly be affirmed that all nations look with complacency on their ownpeculiar Culture—the organized complex of habits of thought and of conduct by which their own routine of life is regulated—as being in some way worthier than thecorresponding habits of their neighbors. The case of the German Culture has latterly come under a strong light in this way. But while it may be that no other nation hasbeen so naive as to make a concerted profession of faith to the effect that their ownparticular way of life is altogether commendable and is the only fashion of civilizationthat is fit to survive; yet it will scarcely be an extravagance to assert that in their ownsecret mind these others, too, are blest with much the same consciousness of unique

worth. Conscious virtue of this kind is a good and sufficient ground for patriotic

inflation, so far as it goes. It commonly does not go beyond a defensive attitude,however. Now and again, as in the latter day German animation on this head, thesephenomena of national use and wont may come to command such a degree of popular admiration as will incite to an aggressive or proselytizing campaign.”

Undoubtedly President Bush would agree with Professor Veblen’s praise of culturally determined patriotism: “In all this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind.

The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the




Page | 5

national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from theincrease of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's artor science, his dietary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. Thesespiritual assets of self-complacency are, indeed, to be rated as grounds of high-mindedpatriotism without afterthought. These aspirations and enthusiasms would perhaps berated as Quixotic by men whose horizon is bounded by the main chance; but they make up that substance of things hoped for that inflates those headlong patrioticanimosities that stir universal admiration.”

Professor Rummel also supported President Johnson’s police action in Vietnam,actually a war waged in response to the fear that the Indochina would be dominatedby communists, which would make it easier for them to take over the rest of the

world including the United States as well, and thus bring to ruin the superior way of life. He and University of Virginia lecturer Robert F. Turner, who was a soldier inIndochina and wrote Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development , penned an op-

ed article published by The Washington Times on July 13, 2008 to address what they called the “silly season to select our next president.” The war had already been won by South Vietnam and the United States in 1972, but then was lost becauseCongressional liberals and antiwar protesters were deceived by communists intothinking that the good guys were bad guys, which moved Congress to snatch defeatfrom the jaws of victory, betraying the sacrifice of precisely 58,260 Americans, paving the way for “the greatest democide of the 20 th century on a per capital basis – hundreds of thousands Vietnamese perished, 1.7 million Cambodians wereslaughtered. The liberals’ negligent policies were continued from there to Africa,

Central America, Afghanistan, with the September 11, 2001 attacks as a recentconsequence; wherefore President Bush did the right thing.

Paranoia is a relatively modern psychological syndrome with two sides: delusions of persecution, and delusions of grandeur. An individual must be awfully grand to be

worth persecuting by many. Of course both Kaiser Wilhelm and President Bush hadgood reason to be paranoid on behalf of their respective nations, but if results justify means, the reasonableness of President Bush’s reaction is problematic. In the firstinstance, which was followed by World War Part II, peace and prosperity havejustified the massive violence, as if effects can create causes – time-reverser Henri

Bergson thought they could. The effects of the two Bush wars on Muslim nationsremain to be seen; we hope that one day all the People of the Book will embrace andsing Halleluiahs for their peace and prosperity.

Professor Rummel has asserted that he was “frequently nominated for the NobelPeace Prize.” In fact, he claimed for several years that he had once been among 117finalists for the Prize, citing to an Associated Press report published by the Honolulu




Page | 6

Advertiser on February 26, 1996. Apparently the Advertiser did not vet the source of the story. Someone else allegedly checked with a member of the Nobel Committee,and then proceeded to scandalize the professor, spreading the word that he lied aboutbeing on the finalist list; no such list exists, first of all, his detractor claimed; anyway,the names of nominees are kept confidential for fifty years. According to theprofessor’s blog, freedomspeace.blogspot.com, a respected friend advised him to dropthe claim rather than appear foolish to people who were knowledgeable about the

workings of the Nobel Committee. His claim of being a finalist, his friend said, wasrather unimportant anyway.

“He is simply unaware,” wrote Professor Rummel, “of the esteem men without hisinside view of the Nobel nomination give to it or even better, to being ‘finalist.’ Of the prizes and awards I’ve won, and all the books and professional articles I’vepublished, this is the number-1 credibility booster for my research claims.” Moreover,

“What is evident is that the Northern Europeans with whom I am in contact seem tohave a nonchalant attitude toward the Nobel Peace Prize Nomination. Americans donot. Of whatever I’ve achieved, this is the one thing that people center on, and thatgives my research on the democratic peace and its promotion the most credibility for

Americans.”

Whether or not Professor Rummel was a nominee for the Prize, or whether hestretched the truth in reference to his nomination, should not add or subtract one iotafrom the merits of his statistical work supporting the notion that only his brand of democracy can result in permanent world peace. His numbers do not lie even though

we may disagree with his conclusions for one reason or another, or insist that they aretentative, opining that the numbers will go against him one day, perhaps on the finalday when the ultimate lord’s Doom is rendered, when freedom-fighting anarchists,hitherto suppressed by the monopolistic police power of hypocritical democratic-republicanism, detonate nuclear weapons. Fascism is, after all, the perfection of thecapitalism that competes to drive out the competition, in the economic war of allagainst all, and totally dominate the political-economy by incorporating world marketsinto a monopoly or oligopoly. Since everyone naturally yearns for absolute powerhence freedom to live forever without impedance, extreme individualists would haveno qualms about bucking the totally democratic state into oblivion at enormous cost

of life. Instead of the imperialistic state withering away, it may be blown tosmithereens, and only Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, denied the love it wanted, will beleft standing in the bitter end.

Every war may seem just to the belligerents no matter which side they fight on.German Professor Rudolph Eucken justified the Great War from his heart whileProfessor Rummel probably believes that he justified the Iraq War with his head. We




Page | 7

tend to confuse heart and head, no matter how objective we try to be. Thoughts nomatter how arid are rooted in feelings – the ancients thought that the heart was theseat of thought. In any case we may rationalize the biddings of the heart, and claimthat reason presides although the tail may be wagging god spelled backwards. My heart is with Professor Eucken and my head is with Professor Rummel, yet one sideof me, the pacific revulsion to my violent temper, a reaction that would make apacifist out of me, still disagrees with the both of them. I mentally admire more themartyr who believes that it is better to suffer a wrong than to do one, and holds that alife one must kill for is not worth living, than the man who claims that a life not worthkilling for is not worth living. Nevertheless, if I were to advocate war, I would preferthat it be waged for a secular reason rather than being divinely intuited as an irrationalspiritual command from the god, the Father of his father, whom President Bush, forinstance, said he consulted to justify his war.

It matters not whether or not President Bush was in touch with the Heavenly Father whom he said was greater than his earthly father back at the ranch. What mattered was the probability of partially obtaining the desired or ideal outcome, the eventualinstantiation of Heaven on Earth, i.e. peace and prosperity. Professor Rummel backedPresident Bush’s war because it accorded with his scientific i.e. statistical way of thinking. Like it or not, his numbers do not lie: only democracy apparently saves the

world from war, and thus is the logical path to salvation, a road laid downhermetically by Hermes so long ago. To make the world safe for democracy, toprogress towards universal peace and prosperity, Iraq’s non-democratic state, for one,had to be destroyed, and a democratic regime imposed in its place, whether the

multilateral world liked the unilateral way of going about it or not.

The author at University of Hawaii Monoa




Page | 8

I was introduced to Professor Rummel’s ideas roughly thirty years ago, shortly after itoccurred to me, as I contemplated the clouds on a flight from Oahu to the Big Island,that Israel should be arrested for using its awesome military might in unfair fights; theratio of dead normally favored Israel 10:1, and the ratio of physical damage of anti-Israel infrastructure and homes to that of Israel was extremely lopsided, not tomention that millions of direly impoverished people were being held hostage in virtualconcentration camps. It was as if Israel had become its worst enemy, an aggressive,racist nation, in memory of the Nazis – ironically, the anti-Semites were Semitesthemselves in this instance. Of course my thoughts were politically incorrect and if stated might have subjected me to the charge of being anti-Semitic even though my father was a Jew, which I learned did not make me a genuine Jew because my mother

was a gentile – they met when he was an American soldier during World War II.

I was a war baby: I cut my teeth on war movies and played with toy Tommy guns,killing numberless imaginary enemies, and I accumulated a great toy army in a shoebox, but I was too young to participate in the police action in Korea, which killedsome of my friends’ fathers – my best friend’s father came home from Korea andhung himself in the garage we loved to play war games in; my friend and his brother,and then their mother, followed suit a few weeks later. Before I was eligible to servein the military, I had already run away from my “home” in Kansas, when I turned 13,for the good I imagined I would find in the City. My ideals or escapes from reality

were inspired by The Wizard of Oz while eating large peanut butter cookies.




Page | 9

Before I ventured to New York City, after I ran away from the awful truth of anuclear family, I read The Ugly American and was tear-gassed by soldiers in front of theChicago Armory for demonstrating against the police action that I had managed toavoid as a missing juvenile. Not that I was entirely opposed to violence in my juveniledelinquency, or to war per se, notwithstanding the suicides of my best friend and hisfamily. I was convinced by dissident university students, some of them Marxists, thatthe police action in Vietnam was the wrong way to establish world peace. I had, as my father said, a “conflict with authority,” and I naturally became somewhat interested incommunism after reading a J. Edgar Hoover pamphlet denouncing it.

Eventually, reasoning from the relatively peaceful relationship of the states within theUnited States after the Civil War to the world at large, I induced that world peacecould be realized by an international police force enforcing international law. It wasunimaginable that Kansas, for example, would go to war with Missouri; the United

States is a free country. It seemed obvious at the time that internally peaceful nationsshould merge into an overarching federal state, modeled, of course, after the UnitedStates of America, having a superior police force capable of quashing tyrants andoutlaws.

Still, I had reservations about the tendency to use force to impose whatever seemslogically best on the whole world for its own good once the ineluctable logic of thatbest is known. Each and every one of us is potentially an outlaw and for good reason;there can be no good without evil: every god needs a devil, as the Dualists, theorthodox Zoroastrians, knew very well – Zurvanism confuses the two in one hence is

heresy. Monotheism or monism is not the logical system that it appears to be: it isessentially absurd. God knows that I have my own devil to contend with. Perhapssome rooms or world arenas should be allowed for small-scale violence, I opined.

Nonetheless, Professor Rummel’s complex ideas, so simply expressed, and hiskindness in communicating with me and allowing me to read his unpublishedmanuscripts, made a lasting impression on me, inspiring me to take up the question,of waging war to make peace, from time to time.

I knew that his theory was based on the field theory of the father of social psychology,

Professor Kurt Lewin, who, like many soft scientists, rolled out a theory based onmetaphysical concepts developed in the hard sciences; for instance, the concept of adynamic field or space where events occur in patterns, even though the patterns may not be seen with the eye, such as a magnetic field, for which the pattern made by ironfilings around a magnet and other, unseen but mathematically measurable events,seems to confirm the existence of so-called fields.




Page | 10

Double Helix Nebula

An apparent magnetic field may take the form of a double helix, a kind of threedimensional curve, an uniformly intertwined double spiral that rarely occurs in nature;for instance, in DNA, and in a Milky Way nebula. Simple spirals were sketched by primitive man on stones, as early as 50,000 years ago, tracing the course of the Sunand other heavenly bodies; the spiral was a symbol of a superior order, an apparently divine order installed by an invisible hand.

A winding snake on the Earth below represented a living continuity, a fluctuating form that could be captured with a crooked staff. A single snake winding uniformly



Recollecting Pr fessor Ru mel

up a sta The anask, “Isoccurriproduc

Now aor strif shepherhow siconflictprophe

regressidestruc versa.during residenproperlalso carIrene,

ff becameient Hindthat a liv g naturalld by repe

ouble hel, as in thed’s staff.ple life e

and coopy the fut

n fromive, for thpollo, theis enlighte in a cav associate

ied the Caealth-give

the magicpsycholosnake orin pheno

ting the pr

x has twomarriagehe conte

volved intration, hatre, and h

ultiplicity spiral woproverbialning advacondo in with Her

duceus. Ato mortal

healing w gist, to aca dead st

mena suchocess that

snakes, reof man anplation of

complee and love;

might e

to the unirks both world trace, from

a suburb omes, thed so did I!" says the

nd of Asuaint the

ck in theDorothy’

derives a h

lepius anddisciple w

water?”s tornado.elix from

a symbolith deceptie find the

A vortex,spiral.

of immort ve maya ,

spiraling but the w

ality.ight

helixy, is

resenting d wo-manthis staff forms vithus evenen say th

y extolledays, fromeler and caveman af the capitessengerene (“peaancient fr

the peacef (“wife of

may leadsexual d

a blind mat a rever

by monistgenerationolonizer,d shepherl, but thef the godse”), the g gment fro

l reconciliman”), adne to intu

vision ann may bec

sal of the

ic enthusito degeneay have c

d in the maduceus,

. Iris, mesddess of m an anon

ation of dancing u

t, for exareproduc

ome a seeprogress,

sts, is in eration andrried thatuntains, t

as it is callenger of eace. "O symous tex

ality theple,

tion,and

or a

ffect vicestaff o hisd, isera,

weett.

Page | 11

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Rod_of_asclepius.png

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_p7LSSnp3KmU/TAg_Qk9YJpI/AAAAAAAAAE0/5cUcbMk2kxE/s1600/caduceus_1_.gif&imgrefurl=http://anukausar10.blogspot.com/&usg=__x9ZyxfTjy0-Pk0IM0Mw-O-4JElI=&h=1100&w=1109&sz=19&hl=en&start=3&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=sw1XMBlqE5rvzM:&tbnh=149&tbnw=150&prev=/images?q=Caduceus&um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:1

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Rod_of_asclepius.png




Page | 12

Hermes of course was not only the messengers of the gods but he was the travelling god of trade hence he protected shepherds, merchants, travelling salesmen, gamblers,and even liars and thieves – only someone who knows what the truth is canintentionally lie. The notion of property whether stolen or not is the key tounderstanding Hermes. That property may be physical or conceptual. As messengerof the gods, he expressed the Logos, in the form of concepts combined into logicalnarratives or stories. Concepts are the logical terms or building blocks of language,

which Aristotle described as something that stands out: horós , “that which is limited.”In Latin, the term was terminus, known by the ancients as the piles of stones used tomark boundaries of properties, the markers that marked the limits of fields andidentified the right roads to certain destinations. The guardian god of the definite state

was Jupiter Terminalis. Thus Hermes was “the god of the right road”, that is, the roadto salvation. The proper word for that road or journey to a destination is “method.”

(For an illuminating discussion in plain language of such terms, see Ortega y Gasset’sThe Idea of Principle in Leibnitz and The Evolution of Deductive Theory )

We cannot find photographs or drawings of Professor Lewin carrying a Caduceusaround his theoretical field, the “life space” he marked off for his social psychology.Simply put and somewhat oversimplified, his field of action constitutes hispsychological perspective on the dynamic relationship of the I and We, or theindividual in a social context or situation. He believed the relationship between aconcrete individual and concrete social situation could be mathematically expressed,

wherefore his social psychology seemed genuinely scientific. Human behavior is a

function of both environment and person – the social environment influences aperson’s behavior, and the person influences the environment. That is: B= f (P.E).

Professor Rummel, in Understanding Conflict and War , points out that people havedifferent concepts of peace depending on their perspectives. Peace intuitively apprehended is harmony, tranquility, the absence of war and such. We note thatintuition may not only be considered as transcendentally divine but as the inner oroccult voice of animal nature, represented, for example, by Dorothy’s dog Toto, whois never wrong. But thoughtful people have defined peace in different ways; they havedifferent concepts and golden theories of the nature of peace. Peace intuited is the

name given to a situation we perceive, and everyone seems to intuitively know whatan instance of peace is. But that “peace” is not a general concept. Once we abstractthe features that all cases of peace have in common, we will by way of definition of itsboundaries hopefully arrive at the abstract concept of peace. In any event, intellectualsare hard to please, may arrive at conflicting conceptions of peace and engage in bitterdisputes with one another in their ivory towers. The Wizard of Oz at the end of the




Page | 13

Yellow Brick Road or evolving spiral is a charlatan if not simply proof that humannature is fallible and that our conceptions of peace are opium dreams.

Dorothy dreaming in the Poppy Field

Professor Rummel said that he saw peace, from his perspective, “as a phase in aconflict helix, equilibrium within a social field.” A “balance of powers” is arrived atthrough conflict and cooperation and expressed as a contract in which theirexpectations are identified. If the balance of power shifts and their expectations arenot realized, a gap forms and puts the structure under enough stress, all hell might

break loose: “It is this social contract that is peace within social field theory. Peacethen is determined by a process of adjustment between what people, groups, or states want, can, and will do. Peace is based on a consequent balance of powers and involvesa corresponding structure of expectations and patterns of cooperation. Moreover,peace may become unstable when an increasing gap develops between expectationsand power, as here defined, and may collapse into conflict, violence, or war.”

Professor Rummel’s helical principle apparently favors a closed or conservative, inertsociety rather than a liberal or open, dynamic one, if peace is to be made permanent:“The Helix Principle. Conflict becomes less intense, cooperation more lasting. If

interaction occurs in a closed system or is free from sudden, sharp changes in theconditions of a relationship (as, for example, if one party to a business contract goesbankrupt, or a signatory to a regional military alliance with the United States has amilitary coup), then through conflict and cooperation people gradually learn moreabout each other, their mutual adjustments come easier, their expectations moreharmonious and lasting. Conflict and cooperation thus form a helix, moving upward




Page | 14

on a curve of learning and adjustments, with the turn through cooperation being morefamilistic and durable; that through conflict shorter and less intense.”

Perhaps Professor Rummel’s alchemical path to the better place over the rainbow isnot as golden or illuminating as we would like it to be.

I recently contacted Professor Rummel in Hawaii to ask him what he thought of George Soros’ political ideology - I had dubbed it ‘Sorosian’ - derived from theconcept of an open society, which I opine would be better symbolized by the double

helix of Caduceus representing ever-widening, continual progress through evenly regulated competition, than by the staff of Asclepius, with its one way to immortality, which might, for all I know, be a snake charmer’s dead end. The ideas of the two mendid seem similar in some respects. I also asked the retired political science professorabout the late Senator Spark Matsunaga’s peace academy.

More significantly in theoretical terms, I questioned one of his ideas presented inUnderstanding Conflict and War , to see what he had to say about it, hoping to see

whether or not his response would support the view that what professors say about waging war to make peace might have a calculable effect on the process. After all,

Professor Lewin had said, “If you want to understand something, try to change it.”Have what professors said actually changed the war and peace process?

I read Chapter 22 ‘What About Motivations’ of Volume 1 ‘The DynamicPsychological Field, of Understanding Conflict and War , from which I picked out atrandom, under Section 22.1 ‘The Drive For Power’, the professor’s concept of the“drive for identive power.” (sic)




Page | 15

Of course, the notion that human beings have “drives” or are driven by “instincts”inaccessible to consciousness is out of vogue although the words remain in commonusage and we cannot help using them. The term “motives” became more fashionable,meaning that human beings are goal-seeking animals; our desires for objects motivateus to act in certain ways within our respective social fields.

Would understanding this particular concept, not to mention all the concepts andtheir relationships the professor wrote about in Understanding Conflict and War , be of any use at all to prevent war or to effectively wage war to make peace? Can suchconcepts be used to lay out a path to permanent peace? If so, they should beremembered and acted upon. Yet people who entertain the same concepts often findthemselves at each other’s throats. Is that because their concepts are too complicated,or too many to be remembered at one time, in contrast to the Golden Rule? Even the

latter may be differently interpreted. Perhaps the unconscious “drives” are rightly blamed.

As I interpret it, the “drive for identive power” is based on the individual’s self-awareness that it is a separate identify – I am not That – related to its will to survive

when confronted with That. That is, I, for instance, would have absolute power topersevere without impedance if I could – but then I would not exist, for it is therelationship of resistance that fashions the “I”. Now the nude individual’s identity isin part cultivated by others, whereby the other’s definitions, as it were, are introjectedand identified as one’s own self, clothing the naked ‘I’ as it were.

“Broadly, the motivation to power is to manifest, to assert oneself against the world. This I will call the drive for identive power. Narrowly, the motivation to power is todominate others through force, threats (coercion), rewards (bargaining), persuasion,manipulation, or love. This can be called the drive for domination , the power overothers.” The distinction as stated is logically confusing inasmuch as one drive is saidto be another drive, but the professor tries to make a hierarchical distinction later on,

when he subordinates the drive for dominance, but then resorts to fuzzy logic again:“The drive for identive power is manifested through the superordinate goal of self-esteem, and the drive for power as dominance is related to the self-assertive need.

Rather than being a motive, however, dominance is primarily a temperament, acharacteristic way of behaving.”

WALTERS: Have you expressed any opinions on George Soros' activism?

RUMMEL: No. I don't agree with his politics, but believe his funding of the left is hisright and respect it. It is democracy at work.




Page | 16

WALTERS: Mr. Soros is certainly left of right, but in some respect he is still wherehis early political thinking was formed, in between the Nazis and the Red Army fightfor Budapest, posing as a Christian, not yet willing, as his father said at the time, toexchange bread for stones.

RUMMEL: I characterize him as ideologically on the far left, and only judging that by the far left groups that he supports with his money.

WALTERS: The almost universal perspective of Mr. Soros as a leftist and a radicalone at that due to his funding activities, including his efforts to bring down the Bush

Administration, leave me wondering at his leftist reputation in the case of Georgia, where he and the Bush Administration seem to be on the same page, and have worked in tandem establishing the so-called puppet regime there. But there is an

important question that I have always wanted to ask you, in view of your empiricalfindings that democratic states tend to be pacific at least towards one another, yourliking for peace, and the supposed desire of the overwhelming majority of the world'spopulation for democracy: Do you believe world democracy should be established by force?

RUMMEL: No, not to establish democracy per se. But, if the nondemocratic regimeis murdering its people wholesale, as is Burma and Sudan (N. Korea is a separateproblem), then I believe the democracies should intervene to stop it. Then, if they do,this is an opportunity, as with Iraq and Afghanistan, to free the people as well.

WALTERS: I know many people could have cared less about the nuclear-weaponspretext - any lie would suffice (and according to Carl Schmidt, lies are necessary toobtain cooperation in a democracy of conflicting interests) to rally people tooverthrow undemocratic regimes, especially the most repressive and dangerous ones.

RUMMEL: This was not a lie. It was what all major intelligence agencies believed.

WALTERS: I believe your belief is sincere, and believe it is based on your early empirical study, that "all major intelligence agencies believed", although evidence later

surfaced that intelligence reports to the contrary existed and were ignored. I mustadmit that my belief, that the three major propositions for going to war were false,

was merely "intuitive." For me, the jury is still out and may forever be out. Ipersonally do not know the state of mind upon which the decision was made, whetheror not there was a deliberate intention to deceive, but I would not be surprised if that

were the case.




Page | 17

RUMMEL: Keep in mind that a mistaken belief is not a lie. A lie is an intentionaldeception.

WALTERS: I shall keep that in mind in the future as a precaution against jumping toconclusions. I am lately more cautious than usual, as my beliefs in the past, being imperfect, have led me to jump to the wrong conclusions, to suppress doubts, and, ingood faith, even ignore some evidence to the contrary. I would like to know if youpersonally believe that sometimes it is necessary to use any means whatsoever,including immoral or unethical means, such as lying to the electorate to get them toagree on a course of action (war) that would accomplish good ends (peace). If not,

why not?

RUMMEL: I searched my mind for an historical instance when a president did this,and I would have also. What comes to mind is the Battle of Britain, when under the

cover of many lies Roosevelt provided aid to Britain which helped save it from theGerman onslaught. If Britain had lost, that would have been the end of Europe as weknew it, and Nazi Germany would have had it all. The American nation was strongly isolationist, and Roosevelt could not have otherwise helped save Europe, andconsequently Europe.

WALTERS: Do you have any mixed feelings about the pre-emptive overthrow of Iraq's sovereign state?

RUMMEL: No. A great threat was removed, a mass murderer was executed, and Iraq

is a now a functioning democracy with national elections, and a democraticconstitution voted on by all Iraqis.

WALTERS: I have been perusing Chapter 22 of your Understanding Conflict and War. In sum, what empirical bearing or "central role" did your distinction between thedrive for “identive” power and the drive for dominative power actually have on theunderstanding of conflict and war?

RUMMEL: None that I can recall. The distinction is to help understanding personaland interpersonal relations, but not societies and war generally. There the important

distinctions are coercion, force, exchange, and authoritative powers.

WALTERS: Is your helix reconciling conflict and resolution a double helix?

RUMMEL: No, just a single helix




Page | 18

WALTERS: Did Spark Matsunaga express a particular ideology of peace and/or amethodology of conflict resolution? If so, what is it in a nutshell? Do you agree withit? Did you agree with his efforts?

RUMMEL: I do not recall him expressing anything about conflict or war. He justseems in retrospect to have been an ordinary antiwar type.

WALTERS: I liked Spark and visited him in Washington. He was really keen on theinstitution of a peace academy for conflict resolution, in distinction from the waracademies. Now I see the University of Hawaii has a peace academy dedicated to him,and there is also an international one in his honor. However, I am not able to obtainany of his writings on peace.

RUMMEL: I never saw any writings of his.

WALTERS: I expected them to have been scanned and put on the WWW for publicgood, but all I can find is reference to his papers at UH, and I find no link for

viewing.

RUMMEL: I doubt that there are any papers. I believe that his reputation in the peacearea has been built up for the sake of the institute. The UH peace academy is nothing but a propaganda mill for a very liberal conception of peace.

Documents

Recollecting Professor Rummel