Brain on the battlefield

Below are excerpts from the book with permission from the publisher, Macmillan. It costs ₹899.  ------------------------------------------------

In our time, the democracies face uncertainty about others’ intentions. In late 2021 and early 2022 many simply couldn’t believe that Russian President Putin really intended to invade Ukraine. That included members of the public like my friend Rick, whom we met in a North London pub at the start of this book, as well as the intelligence agencies and leaders in France and Germany. But that’s exactly what Putin intended.

And what about the possibility of war between America and China over somewhere like Taiwan?

For decades, such a war in East Asia was seen as possible but very unlikely. Neither side intended war. If war happened, it would arise from unintended escalation, perhaps after an accidental collision between military aircraft leading to misunderstandings, actions, and reactions that escalated to war. For most analysts in western governments and leading universities, the main analogy was the run-up to World War I, not World War II.

But around mid-2022, something changed radically among even middle-of-the-road analysts in the American and British governments. The probability of war over somewhere like Taiwan was no longer seen as small. And the reason was a radical change in the assessment of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s intentions.

That didn’t mean that war was seen as more likely than not. But rather, they now saw a far from zero probability that Xi Jinping might press the metaphorical button.

Threats are often assessed as a combination of intentions and capability. Xi’s intentions wouldn’t matter if China was incapable, but that isn’t the case. In a conventional war in East Asia, the United States could lose.

In late 2021, the past eighteen war games by U.S. military planners had shown American forces losing over Taiwan. The think tank I work with in Washington, D.C., the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), recently made public the results of war games that tested various scenarios for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan—and they were more optimistic for America. In most—but not all—scenarios the Chinese lost. But even that CSIS study requires Taiwan to resist strongly like Ukraine (which may not happen) and often predicts large U.S. losses (likely dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and many thousands of service personnel). Moreover, while America is powerful in any one theater, it has only limited numbers of some key weapon systems—and could spread itself too thinly if such a war were coupled with conflict in Europe, and war against Iran in the Middle East. Or other serious complications, like some form of (very likely) North Korean involvement, which could create a two-front war in east Asia alone.

The main point is that America could easily lose a conventional war in East Asia. That loss matters in itself. Losing a big conventional war is the first of three ways by which the democracies can lose in our time.

But also, before a war, that possibility makes it harder to deter China.

And after the early blows, for example although America retains a reasonable chance of preventing an initial Chinese amphibious invasion occupying all of Taiwan—if Taiwanese troops have the will to fight—that is just the first fight. Bigger questions then arise, even if America won that opener: How would thousands of American deaths affect American domestic politics? How would America rebuild given American shipyards’ capacity of less than 100,000 gross tons (a measure of ship volume) compared to China’s 21 million, even if allies close the gap somewhat? Could this, as great power wars often do, turn into a longer, larger war? If Europe and the Middle East were involved, would this be World War III fought across the globe? After Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, it took ninety-nine years until World War I erupted—and we’ve had about eight decades since 1945.

We are living history forward, without hindsight. We cannot know what Xi Jinping will decide: real uncertainty exists about his intentions. In his brain. A single brain that matters, because Xi is the most powerful leader in China since Mao Zedong, and he has the power to make this decision.

If Xi decides to attack, it will be up to those in countries like Taiwan, the United States, and U.S. allies to decide how they ought to respond.

Every human, every society, is flawed.

Like it or not, every society that fought in World War II believed their war was morally justified. Clement Attlee, a political opponent of Churchill who beat him in the 1945 General Election, recalled that before the war Churchill had cried while telling him about the fate of Germany’s Jews. But across the North Sea, Germany’s SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, like millions of Germans, thought his work ethically justified, too.

Every neutral society thought that avoiding the fight was justified. Sweden profited nicely selling Germany vital war supplies until late in the war. Ireland’s neutrality allowed many Allied sailors to die. Even after the Holocaust was well known, Ireland’s prime minister and president gave official condolences on Hitler’s suicide.

The belief that war is unjustifiable—pacifism—was widespread in the democracies during the 1920s and ’30s. After the terrible losses of World War I, international idealism led to the creation of the League of Nations. In 1928 the American and French foreign ministers persuaded fifty-nine countries to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war. In 1934 and 1935 some 11.5 million Britons voted in a peace ballot, overwhelmingly supporting disarmament. In 1936 French socialist Prime Minister Léon Blum led a million-strong demonstration through Paris in favor of peace.

Pacifists’ political successes intentionally helped to slow the democracies’ preparations for war against Nazi Germany. But in Germany, the Nazis sent prominent pacifists to exile, prison, or the concentration camp. Stalin’s Russia treated them similarly.

Pacifists in the democracies had no means to stop Hitler or Stalin launching wars, and support for pacificism evaporated—something today’s pacificists in the democracies might usefully remember when reflecting on how they might really react to events. During the war, the British Commonwealth and United States also allowed “conscientious objection” to fighting (again, unlike Germany or Russia). But only a minuscule number took that option: fewer than sixty thousand in Britain out of some five million who served, and only forty-three thousand in the United States out of over twelve million.

At the time of writing, pacifists aren’t exactly prominent inside Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Ali Khamenei’s Iran, or Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. Pacificists don’t have much power in any part of Israel-Palestine either, or the dozens of other places with armed conflict today.

Peace is a good end, but pacifism seems far from having any means of getting there.

So if sometimes morally we ought to fight, how can we better morally judge what ends to fight for and what means to use? And how does our brain’s orchestra make such judgments? 

(The next book that the Blueprint will feature: After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order by Rana Dasgupta)