Seminar Three
Warfare, genocide and ethnic conflict
Preventing war and genocide

Long Khanh Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1966
SP4 R. Richter, 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, lifts his battle weary eyes to the heavens, as if to ask why? Sergeant Daniel E. Spencer stares down at their fallen comrade. The day's battle ended, they silently await the helicopter which will evacuate their comrade from the jungle covered hills. Long Khanh Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1966.
Photography by Pfc. L Paul Epley

The psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan has spent much of his professional life studying ethnic and political strife in the Middle East. He has taught arbitration and conflict resolution to cultural and political leaders, using his skills as a psychoanalyst in a group setting. In Killing in the Name of Identity he wrote:

Despite some pessimism about human nature, especially as itis manifested in large groups, I believed that we could be successful incertain areas of international conflict if we were to spend extended periods of time—as a psychoanalyst spends years in treating an analysand—opening dialogues between enemies and providing actual examples of peaceful coexistence… I knew we could not change human nature in general, but perhaps we could manage to tame massive aggression in certain locations.

In an earlier book Blood Lines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism, Volkan wrote that most Jewish people share a legacy “to never forget,” and he asked the poignant question: “How do members of a group adaptively mourn past losses… so that they do not induce feelings of anger, humiliation, and the desire for revenge?”

Although Volkan's studies and teaching reflect a state-of-the-art understanding of warfare and ethnic conflict, not once in his books have I found a discussion of evolutionary aspects of human behavior. He covers cultural, developmental, and psychoanalytic aspects of the we-they tendency inherent in human nature, but fails to address the critical need of understanding human nature in a fundamentally biological light.

How did a we-they tendency evolve and become so powerful? Has it had Darwinian adaptive value over the course of our evolution? If so, at what level(s) of selection did it evolve—gene, individual, and/or group?

Much has been written about how to intervene in ethnic conflicts—how to stop genocide from escalating and “spilling out of control”—but the challenge is like sweeping back the ocean with a broom. If we wait until feelings are at the breaking point we have mostly lost the chance to intervene by arbitration. Instead,I would argue that we are “missing the boat” in the search for a solution to genocide.

In 1940, children of an eastern suburb of London, who have been made homeless by the random bombs of the Nazi night raiders, wait outside the wreckage of what was their home.
In 1940, children of an eastern suburb of London, who have been made homeless by the random bombs of the Nazi night raiders, wait outside the wreckage of what was their home.
National Archives and Records Administration
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NOTES
Epley, Pfc. L. Paul. SP4 R. Richter, 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade, lifts his battle weary eyes to the heavens, as if to ask why? Sergeant Daniel E. Spencer stares down at their fallen comrade. The day's battle ended, they silently await the helicopter which will evacuate their comrade from the jungle covered hills. Long Khanh Province, Republic of Vietnam, 1966. Photograph. 1966. 111-SC-635974. Signal Corps Photographs of American Military Activity, compiled 1754–1954. Library of Congress: National Archives and Records Administration.
Volkan, Vamik. Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflicts. Pitchstone Publishing. Los Angeles, 2006. ISBN 978-0-972-88757-1
Volkan, Vamik. Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism. Westview Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. ISBN 978-0-813-39038-9.
Children of an eastern suburb of London, who have been made homeless by the random bombs of the Nazi night raiders, waiting outside the wreckage of what was their home. Photograph. September 1940. 306-NT-3163V. Pictures of World War II. Library of Congress. National Archives and Records Administration.
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