Sacrifice and Solidarity

Wars are supposed to be moments to renew national solidarity, but Agnieszka Monnet argues that “all wars since WWII have been failures, as far as regenerating a collective sense of purpose and national cohesion is concerned: so-called successful ones, such as the Panama Invasion and Persian Gulf, as ineffective in this respect as the failures (e.g. Vietnam) and stalemates (e.g. Korea).”

Why do some wars lend themselves to national renewal more than others?

Citing Margin and Ingle’s Blood Sacrifice and Nation, Monnet suggests that the death toll is one factor: “the greater the number of deaths, the greater the effect of national ‘coming together’ and patriotism. The two most ‘successful’ wars in this regard in the history of the United States were the Civil War and World War II. In the first, nearly one in ten able-bodied adult males were killed or injured. In the second, the percentage of deaths relative to the population was smaller, but 82% of American men between the age of 20 and 25 were drafted or enlisted, and therefore at risk.” No doubt this has partly to do with the fact that so many more families and friends are touched by high-casualty wars than by low-casualty wars.

The clarity of the result is another factor: “the outcome must be definite: victory or loss must be clear and borders re-consecrated in order for time to begin again. The outcome itself is less important than its clarity. Even a loss can have a tremendously unifying effect on a group (one thinks of the Alamo or Weimar Germany). In contrast, an ambiguous outcome, such as that in Korea, cannot create a feeling of national unity. This theory can help explain the memory hole into which the Korean War disappeared in spite of its 36,574 dead and 103,284 American wounded.”

Monnet concludes, “It is often said that wars are launched as a means of generating unity and distracting a civilian population from domestic discord. This is the cynical commonplace that was made about Clinton’s bombing of Serbia and Kosovo as well as Bush Sr.’s decision to attack Iraq in 1990. Like many clichés, it may be partly true, and some wars do indeed create powerful feelings of national solidarity, spawning institutions and commemoration practices that give the country momentum for a while. Yet Marvin and Ingle’s theory of blood sacrifice and civil religion suggests that this solidarity comes not from facing or defeating a common enemy, real or invented, but from the deaths of members/soldiers willing to die in the name of the nation. In other words, the only kind of war that could possibly create real national renewal is one that is so cataclysmic that it would cost not thousands, but hundreds of thousands, of lives.”

That is a thought to give one pause.