Essay on aggression and war philosophy by Edward Bernard Glick

23 Article 7. Military Review An Old Man’s Thoughts on War and Peace Edward Bernard Glick May-June 2011 -- WHEN I WAS a young man in graduate school, two books impressed me mightily. They still do. One is Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression. An M.D. and a Ph.D. and a 1973 Nobel laureate in medicine and physiology, Lorenz established the field of ethology, the study of the behavior of animals within their natural environment. In his prologue to On Aggression, Lorenz wrote, “The subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man, which is directed against members of the same species.” According to him, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources and turf, and this behavior is part of natural selection. In short, to a great degree, ageressive behavior is innate. The other book that influenced me mightily as a young man was Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative. Ardrey popularized and expanded on Lorenz’s ideas. After reading Ardrey, a Book-of-the- Month Club reviewer asked, “Are we a territorial species? Do we defend ourselves, whether by war or other means, because we have learned to do so—or because, as animals, we must?” Reading Lorenz and Ardrey provides a good reason for believing the Roman proverb Si vis pacem para bellum, “He who wishes peace should prepare for war.” (The full text of the proverb goes on to say, “He who desires victory should carefully train his soldiers; he who wants favorable results should fight relying on skill, not chance.”) HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023539