Signs of war

...But that leaves the problem of how to tell when a war is about to begin...

...Peace is careful, war profligate...

...An ultimatum is equally hard to accept, and to take back...

...But I am not at all certain we would see war coming, even if every step towards it were of the sort which in retrospect would appear to be clear, logical, and progressive...

...The point at issue might be one of either actual or symbolic substance...

...This is only intended to suggest that tension accelerates the process...

...But this isn't the sort of move you can arrange in a day...

...She turned sixteen in Auschwitz...

...Military histories have a similar narrative line: first the generals did this, and then they did that, until finally the generals on one side could do no more...

...History has a way of catching you by surprise...

...At that point the planes to New Zealand would be filled...

...Reporters do not mention such things, even in the twentieth paragraph, unless they are dramatic and unmistakable...

...I argued with R. that no one had more than one guess in him...

...But she had already been driven from one home, and did not intend to abandon another...

...for a short time, was not far away...

...Such histories recount our collective experience of war, but they fail to close with war as a thing, war as a kind of behavior...

...It is very difficult to tell when a "critical situation" - an arena of danger bristling with chances for war - has reached a point where actual hostilities are imminent...

...Kennedy's advisers at one point favored a surprise attack on the Russian missile sites...

...My friend R. got a passport and seriously thought of taking his family to New Zealand...

...There is sense in that, too...

...and from first use of a nuclear weapon to general war, three feet...

...What distinguishes war from peace is a sudden and dramatic increase in willingness to both suffer and inflict injury...

...One can always pretend to decline to do something for reasons of one's own...

...Once committed, great powers do not like to back down...

...For one thing, it is hard to accept the imminence of an event which arouses deep fear...

...There is too much variety and surprise in human affairs for us to predict the moment of war solely by examining in detail the sources of animosity...

...Odds are, the next time you'd be too skeptical, too hopeful, and too late...

...Things which do can be so inconsequential, at first, they escape notice...

...from a shot fired in anger to the first use of a nuclear weapon, 10 yards...

...If I were planning on leaving for New Zealand, that sort of thing would probably send me to the airport...

...Even so, war...

...Before the shooting starts there is always a chance things might be settled peacefully...

...In any event an ordinary citizen might see war coming only if he has a sensitive ear for that note of the desperate characteristic of a government under severe stress...

...Reports of troop movements, especially those which close forces, would tell us more...

...This offers a risky opportunity to the more resolute of the two...

...But it is the small things which might tell us most...

...It is the sort of thing, on an international scale, which we might describe, if individuals were involved, as getting into a pickle...

...The literature of war concerns itself, for the most part, with military history...

...from ultimatum to a shot fired in anger, 100 yards...

...It is entirely possible that all four stages of a war-precipitating crisis might occur in secret, making it difficult for an ordinary reader of newspapers to sense the growing desperation of the situation...

...Nations are active creatures...

...But to do something, to walk alone across the stage with the whole world watching . . . ! At this point those thinking about New Zealand would be wise to book passage...

...The woman with the tattoo had relatives in Canada...

...Wherever we find armies we must assume that in some circumstances they will go to war...

...Worst was the story anonymously quoting U.S...

...It is primarily danger which would make one or both sides think twice...

...Complete isolation of the president and his main advisers would be an alarming sign, and perhaps the clearest signal of all would be any report of emotional agitation in public by an important official - a cracking voice, trembling hands, an outburst of irrational anger, weeping, etc...

...Her family had planned to leave but didn't move quickly enough...

...If we listen for that note, we may be able to hear war coming...

...In the event, R. never went beyond getting a passport...

...The third stage would follow the issuance of an ultimatum - a clear and unambiguous warning to the other side not to do something, or to do something...

...The latter, requiring a positive act, is inherently more provocative...

...If this advice had been accepted, the first sign of war would have been an act of war...

...It wasn't just the hostage crisis in Iran, then in the first bloom of impasse, or the Russian invasion of Afghanistan...

...For those planning on refuge in New Zealand, it might be wise to anticipate - to behave as you would if a crisis had already proceeded to the next stage...

...It might be said that she had passed the point where she worried first about herself personally...

...They slept there every night until the war ended...

...But the history of particular wars is...

...Because power has an intangible side - the qualities of will which lend weight to words, the stuff of prestige - matters of small importance in themselves may loom suddenly large...

...Determination may carry the day, as it did for the United States over Cuba in 1962, but it also raises the stakes, for the simple reason that backing down gets harder to do (and costs more politically), the longer it is put off...

...she might have left...

...Each side hopes the other will back down first...

...In 1962 Kennedy issued an ultimatum to Khrushchev but he was careful to call it by another name, and he made it clear privately he neither wanted war, nor intended to exploit a Russian retreat...

...The air has cleared, and he feels safe...

...In the spirit of Clausewitz they treat war as a rational endeavor (even when foolishly conducted) - the pursuit of policy by other means...

...When I talk about this with R. I remember the woman with the tattoo on her forearm...

...These books, however interesting, always remind me of E. M. Forster's remark that the appeal of novels is the implicit question: and then...

...and then...

...It was the little stories, some only two or three paragraphs long, which he read in the Times: a report of Russian troop concentrations on the northern border of Iran, American fleet movements, the basing of Russian aircraft along the southwestern border of Afghanistan, far from the areas where rebels were active, close to Iran, close to the Gulf...

...Kennedy wisely shrank from so bold an initiative, and it is likely, but not certain, that future crises will follow a similar pattern...

...A relative had sketched in the story...

...This suggests that the essence of a war-precipitating crisis is a confrontation in which the possible outcomes progressively narrow to failure, or a step in the direction of war - a raising of the ante - as a sign of determination...

...I often think about her when I am talking with my friend R. in New York...

...Most of the important Cold War crises have been affairs of this sort - the struggle of rivals over matters which would have seemed small, even trivial, if they had not involved questions of intangible will...

...If the distance from the onset of crisis to deadlock were imaged as a mile, the distance from deadlock to ultimatum might be a thousand yards...

...The theory I'm working from here is that a major war between great powers will be the result of a kind of self-entrapment...

...They suggest that war becomes increasingly unlikely as sensible men see less and less hope of winning something worth the candle from a recourse to arms...

...Things which might lead to war usually don't...

...Her home in Israel was not far from the Syrian border...

...My own feeling is that the relative importance of the point at issue would not be as significant as the fact of closing, accompanied by an atmosphere of crisis...

...In our century - and especially in our half of our century - a decision for war must be a desperate thing...

...The sound of the guns had been clearly audible in 1973...

...War is not what comes after the equals sign in an equation...

...After the shooting starts, it's too late...

...At that point hopes for a peaceful settlement depend on one or both sides surrendering goals in whole or in part...

...military officials to the effect there was little the Americans could do if the Russians decided to move...

...The shelves of libraries are groaning with tomes recounting the progress of armies in minute detail...

...THOMAS POWERS...

...Before Kennedy announced his blockade of Cuba in 1962 journalists had only the vaguest sense something was up, and no sense of its seriousness...

...This is 'not something which has been much dis-cussed in print...

...Issuing an ultimatum serves as earnest of implacable resolution, but it doesn't leave an opponent much room to maneuver...

...The children of the kibbutz had been moved into a deep shelter covered by a great mass of broken rock held together by several layers of chicken wire...

...The first stage of a pre-war crisis, then, is closing - the coming together of two sides in a dispute...

...There is not much to be gained by describing all the situations which might lead to war - the mixture of oil and anarchy in the Persian Gulf, say, or the isolation of Berlin, or the great empty place where Russian and Chinese armies stare at each other across a mythical line in the earth - because there are so many of them, because each one is so factually complex, and because such situations offer only a possible occasion for war, without requiring it...

...This seems the most likely way a big general war might begin now, not only because we get about halfway into a pickle every few years, and sometimes oftener, but also because the weapons we have acquired for such a war are so frankly terrifying it is hard to imagine anyone deliberately choosing to use them, until he felt himself back flat up to the wall...

...In the past an ultimatum was often little more than a formality, a kind of prelude to hostilities...

...Peace is not the absence of strife, just strife of a quieter kind - a restless tugging and shoving...

...The second stage would be deadlock - the announcement of mutually conflicting claims...

...Western access to oil in the Persian Gulf (or Poland's allegiance to the Warsaw Pact) would be an example of the former, Berlin (or Cuba) of the latter...

...replete with disastrous miscalculations, wars in which high feeling swept away all sense of proportion and restraint, wars blundered into, wars embarked upon in a mood of almost suicidal despondency...

...The catalytic element, then - the thing one must watch for - is mood, a change in feeling, a conviction the only way out is forward...

...It follows that when there is no hope of success there is no chance of war...

...THOMAS POWERSn that, too...

...I MET a woman, some years ago, who had a number tattooed on her forearm She served coffee in her living room on a kibbutz near the Sea of Galilee...

...Background stories in the media and wild fluctuations in the financial markets would tell us little...

...they cannot sit still...

...For another, things can happen so quickly...

...The thing which makes war possible is not reason for it, but capacity for it...

...But there are arguments for another approach...

...the choices pretty much came down to acquiescence, or the use of tactical nuclear weapons...

...He's still thinking about moving to New Zealand permanently, but for the moment is busy with other things...

...Early last year R. worried that things were slipping out of control...

...The fourth stage would follow a shot fired in anger...

...But which...

...When they are big enough to act freely they are continually seeking advantage - a new alliance here, the right to patrol an international strait there, the replacement of a hostile government by a friendly one, exclusive commercial rights, the military embarrassment of opponents with the aid of proxies, the intimidation of neighbors, the secret shipment of arms to the enemies of an opponent's ally, and so on...

...I didn't ask about the number...

...But these initiatives always run the risk of being too successful, and thus eliciting a response on a higher level, a kind of raising of the ante...

...He thought he smelled war in the air...

...It is only necessary for one side to insist things are going to be this way, rather than that...

...If you guessed wrong and then spent three weeks at great expense cooling your heels in an Auckland hotel you'd never regain the confidence in your own judgment to guess boldly again...