Bunker Busters

While the possession of armies and weapons may prevent the annihilation of a nation and give gun owners the means to kill assailants, it also gives them the ability to carry out, for reasons of aggrandizement (and sometimes just to test the weapons), attacks upon other nations and individuals. Not only may they be tempted to use the arms in non-self-defense situations, but their mere possession [of arms] may provoke others to attack because they either fear being attacked or desire to take the weapons for their own use. Hereupon lies the dilemma of disarming. Weapons are needed for survival, yet their possession is likely to involve their owners in the very armed conflicts which the weapons were intended to prevent. Ironically, it is the basic need for self-preservation – as a nation or as an individual – which is both the reason for arms possession and the cause of the killing which the weapons were intended to prevent.

The Evolution of War: A Cross-Cultural Study (1989)

The two types of military organizations—the nonprofessional and the professional—engaged in serious warfare. From my childhood reading I had learned about kinship-based military organizations of American Indians—these were nonprofessional military organizations—and about armies of the ancient world—these were professional military organizations. In 1960, I became acquainted with the concept of the fraternal interest group. After that time, my thinking came to equate the nonprofessional, kinship-based military organization with the fraternal interest group. I believe that the concept of the fraternal interest group is one of anthropology’s seminal ideas. The term was coined by Dutch anthropologists H. U. E. Thoden van Velzen and W. van Wetering; they used fraternal interest group theory to explain why some local groups were peaceful internally and others were not. Included among their several measures of nonpeacefulness was feuding; kinship groups that seek revenge are usually fraternal interest groups. In carrying out vengeance, such groups form raiding parties, thus creating kinship-based military organizations. 

In 1964, my wife-to-be and I conducted a cross-cultural study of feuding , and we found that fraternal interest groups and feuding were related. It was only a short step for me to generalize the finding: If the vengeance group is a military organization, that same military organization can conduct raids upon neighboring polities within the same culture . I created the concept of internal war (contrasting it with external war), conducted another cross-cultural study, and found that fraternal interest groups and internal war were related. Fraternal interest groups, I concluded, were responsible for both feuding and internal war. In conducting these two studies I also demonstrated that nonliterate societies were characterized by great variation in these two types of violence . Since the late 1960s I have viewed any statement that asserts that such societies are either peaceful or warlike as simplistic to the point of being incorrect. Many nonliterate societies are violent and many are not. Fraternal interest group theory provides an explanation for the variation. 

The equating of the second type of military organization, the professional armies of the ancient world, with the armies of some state-level nonliterate peoples has taken place for years. For example, the Zulu army has been compared to hoplite soldiers from Sparta and the Inca army to the Roman legions. Nothing in this study suggests that this equating should not be done. The armies of the four pristine states that we have examined in detail are similar not only to each other but also to the armies of other early states, as well as to the armies of the ancient world. I recognized these similarities in the 1960s. Shortly after compiling of my collected papers on feuding and warfare for publication in 1994, I intensified my reading of military history. Each type of military organization has had a separate career. The first, the fraternal interest group–based nonprofessional military, arose early —how early is a subject of debate. Although I trace it from Homo habilis, I do not believe that early warfare was frequent. It was a rare occurrence, probably, until the emergence of modern Homo sapiens. I also believe, and have for more than ten years, that as hunting weapons improved, big game hunting increased in importance. Concomitant with this change was an increase in the frequency of warfare. Although this view, known as the hunting hypothesis, has been under attack since the 1960s, I believe the attack is largely ideologically driven.

How War Began (2004)

States, or for that matter all polities, are fragile. A government controls a state (but governments also exist in uncentralized political communities). A government can be replaced by a conquering polity, and yet the state may survive, or both government and state can be destroyed. The government may be replaced by an enemy army with the population more or less remaining in place, perhaps to continue doing the hard work of the country. The people can also be killed or removed, perhaps to become slaves in the conquering nation. Boundaries can expand and contract; one common loss in war is loss of territory. An uprising by a segment of the population – a social class or an ethnic group – can destroy the government. Some governments are more afraid of their "own" people than they are of a neighboring, hostile polity. One type of uprising is a civil war, which can split the state into two or more polities. In small-scale societies, fissioning of polities commonly occurs, with the segments either remaining on amicable terms or becoming mortal enemies. A feud can turn to internal war in this fashion. A war can have fatal consequences for a people an their way of life. It is so important to end and prevent wars.

The Anthropology of War (2009)

Keith F. Otterbein (1936–2015)