Synopsis:
The behavioral school of thought vis-à-vis armed conflict is perhaps most effectively expressed in Steven LeBlanc’s book Constant Battles. According to LeBlanc, a so-called ‘risk threshold’ operates as the behavioral device which initiates, deters, or limits conflict. Such a threshold is innate within human action – and serves as a prime mover for sustaining armed conflict over time.
Excerpts:
“In some societies, like highland New Guinea and the Yanomama of Venezuela, warfare was extremely frequent, with raids, ambushes, or battles occurring annually or even monthly. Often these conflicts resulted in only one or two fatalities per incident. When the numbers are tallied over a person’s life span, many of the adult males died fighting.
“Often, when communities are clustered, the land between the clusters becomes hotly contested and thus uninhabitable. These relatively empty zones, or no-man’s lands, are found throughout the world among many different types of societies and are clear evidence for conflict.
“When scholars look carefully at these weapons and ask why people like the Australian Aborigines, who have so few possessions, would have so many weapons of war – special spears, special boomerangs, special spear-throwers, and shields and clubs used only for warfare – the importance of such weaponry becomes clear.
“In the New Guinea highlands, raids often had to be planned in secret, excluding the men and women with close relatives among the group to be attacked, because they were expected to warn the intended victims. All types of societies from foragers to states have these friend-enemy dual relationships.
“People do perceive resource stress before they are starving. If no state or central authority is there to stop them, they will fight before the situation gets hopeless. Resource stress in the form of hunger, and not starvation, is what precipitates warfare.
*All excerpts have been taken from Constant Battles: Why We Fight, St. Martin’s Press.
Strategic Studies Book Club 