Long ago I picked up an idea from the British historian Thomas Macaulay that can also be found in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. These authors put forward the suggestion that people are disposed to be sensitive to the suffering of others depending on their own degree of comfort. Hard conditions make a virtue out of endurance and the acceptance of discomfort, which is not likely to arouse sympathy for the suffering of others.
It also happens that war, which calls for great suffering and sacrifice, demands insensitivity as well. Troops that march without sleep or fight on meager rations will defeat troops that are demoralized by the same conditions. Insensitivity to suffering is a virtue in war. A further extrapolation might be attempted in this regard. A comfortable people (enjoying liberty under a republic of commerce) will tend to have a lower tolerance for suffering and a greater sensitivity to the suffering of others, and therefore a lower readiness for general war.
During World War II the American people and U.S. officials were more sensitive to casualties than officials in Russia and Japan (non-Western countries where the average man lived in poverty). The Russian commanders used troops to clear minefields with their feet. An exchange between Eisenhower and a Soviet commander began with Eisenhower complaining how difficult it was to get through the German mines. Marshal Zhukov responded that there was no problem for the Soviet Army, since Russian troops attacked as though the mines weren't there. After the war, German commanders told of the sacrifices made by Russian troops. The hardships endured by the Russian troops shocked professional German soldiers.
Imperial Japan used teenage boys as suicide pilots during the war. It is difficult to imagine, in a prosperous country, young men or their families accepting the idea of patriotic suicide. The relative poverty of Russia and Japan may go some of the way to explaining both the bravery and brutality of Russian and Japanese troops during the war. As a corollary to all this, insensitivity to one's own suffering suggests insensitivity to enemy suffering. Japanese and Russian atrocities, especially while advancing into enemy territory are unlike those committed by American or British forces. Oddly, the greatest atrocities committed by the Germans were scrupulously organized in a way that avoided publicity or the attending moral shock to the soft and "civilized" majority. May 5 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and it is useful to note that the Nazi's enslaved millions of Jews, political prisoners, and foreign workers in a labor camp system designed to buffer the German people from the hardships of war. Extermination was only part of the German camp system, which kept the German people ignorant of the horrors experienced by prisoners who were forced to work on starvation rations.
For America, deprivations were real during World War II, but the sacrifices of the American people were not comparable to those made by the Russians, Chinese and Japanese. It seems that war falls hardest on the poorer countries, even when those countries are counted among the victors. Wealth shields nations as well as individuals from hardship. At the same time, wealth has a softening effect on the character of the wealthy; and a conscious effort to counteract softening may prove necessary. In the 1960s public attitudes about the Vietnam War changed when U.S. casualty figures began to climb. America abandoned its Vietnamese and Cambodian allies. As a result, Southeast Asia fell to communism and millions perished. One might generalize that a commercial people, in an age of comfort and convenience, isn't as ready for major pain. Such a nation is more likely to retreat and equivocate when asked to sacrifice.
Since World War II the United States government has refused to mobilize the nation in support of military operations. During wars in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, the American people weren't asked to sacrifice their high standard of living. The situation has reached such a state that after the horrors of 9/11 President Bush told the American people to go out and shop - to spend money and live as before (for the sake of an economy based on consumption). No sacrifices have been asked or expected of the American people as a whole. Hardship is the province of America's servicemen and their families.
The American mentality is so conditioned by the shopping mall (i.e., by good living) that we cannot imagine the horrors experienced by Russia during World War II or Southeast Asia in the 1970s. We read a great deal about weapons of mass destruction, but Americans tend to dismiss these weapons from their thinking. The American imagination refuses to envision the many devilish ways that biological, chemical and nuclear weapons may be used. The promiscuous use of WMDs unsettles the whole plan of life and the consumerist notion of what life is all about. The demolition of a country, the total impoverishment of a people is absurd and pointless to a shopper. What strategic advantage would a foreign leader or terrorist gain by the incineration of a glorious shopping mall?
Grand strategy is often an exercise in psychological brutality. The strategist doesn't have to follow moral norms. He doesn't have to respect the citizen's point of view. The strategist who models himself after Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun isn't defending civilization. His plan may be more along the lines of loot and pillage. What would Osama bin Laden do with Saudi Arabia if he got his hands on it? Would he become America's friend, exporting cheap oil to the West? Or would his plan be to shut off the lion's share of the production, bringing unprecedented ruin to Western Civilization?
Conquest is one objective, wrecking is another. Genghis Khan would ask: Why not use nuclear weapons, then? Why not unleash a deadly virus or poison the water supply for half a billion people? Why should so many people live? Why should anyone live when the barbarian itches for a big kill? A century ago the moral sentiments of Europe allowed for colonialism and "the white man's burden." Europe was poorer then, closer to its barbarian roots. The Europeans conquered most of the world. They did not worry about the natives. After decades of peace and prosperity Europe has softened and now renounces imperialism. But the East has not renounced it.
I do not know if prosperity can explain the softness and the increased moralizing of Western policy. I don't know if the atrocities and brutality of despotism can be explained by poverty. I do suspect, however, that weapons of mass destruction signify one thing to a cave-dwelling Muslim fighter and another to a businessman in New York City.
