The Enemy System
(short version as published in The Lancet)
by John E. Mack, M.D.

“There is a substantial, politically influential, and aggressive body of American opinion for which the specter of a great and fearful external enemy, to be exorcised only by vast military preparations and much belligerent posturing, has become a political and psychological necessity.”
—George F. Kennan,
former US Ambassador to the USSR ¹

“Our enemy is a coarse, crooked megalomaniac
who aims to kill us.”
—Tommy White,
retired US Air Force Chief of Staff ²

The threat of nuclear annihilation has stimulated us to try to understand what it is about mankind that has led to such self-destroying behavior. Central to this inquiry is an exploration of the adversarial relationships between ethnic or national groups. It is out of such enmities that war, including nuclear war should it occur, has always arisen. Enmity between groups of people stems from the interaction of psychological, economic, and cultural elements. These include fear and hostility (which are often closely related), competition over perceived scarce resources,[3] the need for individuals to identify with a large group or cause,[4] a tendency to disclaim and assign elsewhere responsibility for unwelcome impulses and intentions, and a peculiar susceptibility to emotional manipulation by leaders who play upon our more savage inclinations in the name of national security or the national interest. A full understanding of the "enemy system"[3] requires insights from many specialities, including psychology, anthropology, history, political science, and the humanities.

In their statement on violence[5] twenty social and behavioral scientists, who met in Seville, Spain, to examine the roots of war, declared that there was no scientific basis for regarding man as an innately aggressive animal, inevitably committed to war. The Seville statement implies that we have real choices. It also points to a hopeful paradox of the nuclear age: threat of nuclear war may have provoked our capacity for fear-driven polarization but at the same time it has inspired unprecedented efforts towards cooperation and settlement of differences without violence.

The Real and the Created Enemy
Attempts to explore the psychological roots of enmity are frequently met with responses on the following lines: "I can accept psychological explanations of things, but my enemy is real. The Russians [or Germans, Arabs, Israelis, Americans] are armed, threaten us, and intend us harm. Furthermore, there are real differences between us and our national interests, such as competition over oil, land, or other scarce resources, and genuine conflicts of values between our two nations. It is essential that we be strong and maintain a balance or superiority of military and political power, lest the other side take advantage of our weakness".

This argument does not address the distinction between the enemy threat and one's own contribution to that threat-by distortions of perception, provocative words, and actions. In short, the enemy is real, but we have not learned to understand how we have created that enemy, or how the threatening image we hold of the enemy relates to its actual intentions. "We never see our enemy's motives and we never labor to assess his will, with anything approaching objectivity".[6]

Individuals may have little to do with the choice of national enemies. Most Americans, for example, know only what has been reported in the mass media about the Soviet Union. We are largely unaware of the forces that operate within our institutions, affecting the thinking of our leaders and ourselves, and which determine how the Soviet Union will be represented to us. Ill-will and a desire for revenge are transmitted from one generation to another, and we are not taught to think critically about how our assigned enemies are selected for us.

In the relations between potential adversarial nations there will have been, inevitably, real grievances that are grounds for enmity. But the attitude of one people towards another is usually determined by leaders who manipulate the minds of citizens for domestic political reasons which are generally unknown to the public. As Israeli sociologist Alouph Haveran has said, in times of conflict between nations historical accuracy is the first victim.[8]

The Image of the Enemy and How We Sustain It
Vietnam veteran William Broyles wrote: "War begins in the mind, with the idea of the enemy."[9] But to sustain that idea in war and peacetime a nation's leaders must maintain public support for the massive expenditures that are required. Studies of enmity have revealed susceptibilities, though not necessarily recognized as such by the governing elites that provide raw material upon which the leaders may draw to sustain the image of an enemy.[7,10]

Freud[11] in his examination of mass psychology identified the proclivity of individuals to surrender personal responsibility to the leaders of large groups. This surrender takes place in both totalitarian and democratic societies, and without coercion. Leaders can therefore designate outside enemies and take actions against them with little opposition. Much further research is needed to understand the psychological mechanisms that impel individuals to kill or allow killing in their name, often with little questioning of the morality or consequences of such actions.

Philosopher and psychologist Sam Keen asks why it is that in virtually every war "The enemy is seen as less than human? He's faceless. He's an animal"." Keen tries to answer his question: "The image of the enemy is not only the soldier's most powerful weapon; it is society's most powerful weapon. It enables people en masse to participate in acts of violence they would never consider doing as individuals".[12] National leaders become skilled in presenting the adversary in dehumanized images. The mass media, taking their cues from the leadership, contribute powerfully to the process.

The image of the enemy as less than human may be hard to dislodge. For example, a teacher in the Boston area reported that during a high school class on the Soviet Union a student protested: "You're trying to get us to see them as people". Stephen Cohen and other Soviet experts have noted how difficult it is to change the American perception of the Soviet Union, despite the vast amount of new information contradicting old stereotypes." Bernard Shaw in his preface to Heartbreak House, written at the end of World War I, observed ironically: "Truth telling is not compatible with the defense of the realm".

Nations are usually created out of the violent defeat of the former inhabitants of a piece of land or of outside enemies, and national leaders become adept at keeping their people's attention focused on the threat of an outside enemy.[14] Leaders also provide what psychiatrist Vamik Volkan called "suitable targets of externalization"[10] – i.e., outside enemies upon whom both leaders and citizens can relieve their burdens of private defeat, personal hurt, and humiliation.[15]

All-embracing ideas, such as political ideologies and fixed religious beliefs act as psychological or cultural amplifiers. Such ideologies can embrace whole economic systems, such as socialism or capitalism, or draw on beliefs that imply that a collectivity owes its existence to some higher power in the universe. It was not Stalin as an individual whom Nadezhda Mandelstam blamed for the political murder of her poet husband Osip and millions of other citizens but the "craving for an all-embracing idea which would explain everything in the world and bring about universal harmony at one go”.[16]

Every nation, no matter how bloody and cruel its beginnings, sees its origins in a glorious era of heroes who vanquished less worthy foes. One's own race, people, country, or political system is felt to be superior to the adversary's, blessed by a less worthy god. The nuclear age has spawned a new kind of myth. This is best exemplified by the United States' strategic defense initiative. This celestial fantasy offers protection from attack by nuclear warheads, faith here being invested not in a god but in an anti-nuclear technology of lasers, satellites, mirrors, and so on in the heavens.

Individual Group Linkages and Lessons in Childhood
To find out the source of hatred or antagonism we need to understand the complex relationship between the psychology of the individual, and the national group.[17] We can start by examining how enmity develops in childhood. In the first year of life a child begins to have a sense of self,[18] which includes the ability to distinguish between familiar people with whom he or she feels comfortable and those who are strangers or are felt to be alien. The small child's ability to distinguish between friends and strangers[19] is accompanied by thought patterns that tend to divide people and things into good and bad, safe and unsafe. It is out of such primitive thinking that the structures of enmity later grow. In the second year the child learns that ill-will directed towards those upon whom he is dependent is dangerous to his own well-being. He develops, therefore, mechanisms such as displacement and externalization which allow him to disown such negative impulses. Grandparents and parents may pass on to their children stories of the designated enemy groups' evil actions so that chosen displacements persist from one generation to another.

From the drawings and comments of children in Germany, the United States, Central America, and Samoa, Hesse showed that by age five a child understands the idea of an enemy, which he or she will depict as whatever in the culture seems most immediately fearful or threatening-a monster, wild animal, or bad man.[20] By age eight a child understands that "the idea of the enemy" has to do with an unfriendly relationship. But this idea does not usually become cast in political terms until age ten to twelve. It is noteworthy that Hesse's research children, including the older ones, tend not to see their own country as bad or responsible for bad actions.

The small child's sense of helplessness is accompanied by a feeling of vulnerability and awareness of dependence on others. The formation of relationships or alliances with other individuals and groups, beginning with family members and extending to the neighborhood, classroom, school playground, and teenage youth group, is an important strategy for gaining a sense of power. Such alliances are the prototype for later political relationships.

All of these primitive, or child-like, mechanisms provide fertile soil for political leaders in real life interethnic or international conflicts. Nationalistic slogans and media manipulation focus the child's mind (or the child-mind of the adult) on the peoples or system he is supposed to hate or fear (Jews, Arabs, capitalists, or communists). In the United States patriotic recruitment is accompanied by commercial profiteering-for example, robotic war toys designed to kill communists.[21]

The extraordinary dimensions of the nuclear threat have also spawned examples of apocalyptic thinking, in which the world is divided into forces of good and evil, and the belief that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, the good would be saved and the evil would perish. In such thinking the primitive, polarizing tendencies of the child's mind are all too evident.

Creating a Safer World
Hesse's finding that even older children do not perceive their own country's responsibility for states of enmity is in accord with those of psychologists and social scientists - that there is no self-awareness or self-responsibility at the political level which corresponds to the awareness of personal responsibility with which we are familiar in a clinical setting." In political life, the assignment of blame, disclaiming of responsibility, and the denial of one's own nation's contribution to tensions and enmity are the norm.[23]

The first task, therefore, is to apply the insights of the behavioral sciences to create a new expectation of political self-responsibility. Nuclear weapons have connected all the peoples of the earth. Not only the nuclear superpowers but also all peoples are now interdependent and mutually vulnerable. Nations may have conflicting values but they cannot afford to have enemies. Education in elementary and secondary schools that reflects this new reality should be our highest priority. Instead of constant blaming of the other side, we need to give new attention to the adversary's culture and history, to his real intentions as well as his hopes, dreams, and values. To understand is not to forgive, but awareness and knowledge could lead to a more realistic appreciation of who has contributed what to the problems and tensions that exist in the world. Young people should be taught in their homes and schools how to identify and resist ideological propaganda.

In the nuclear age we need to redefine hackneyed ideas such as national security or the national interest. just as we can no longer afford enemies, there is no longer such a notion as national security. The security of each depends on the other, and the communication of this reality must become a major focus of our educational system. Similarly, the national interest can no longer be defined unilaterally but exists in a context of mutual interests and dependencies. Physicians who understand the physical realities of nuclear technology, and are gaining a greater awareness of these psycho-political dynamics, can play a vital part in educating their patients and the general public about the basic requirements of planetary safety in the nuclear age.

Political self-responsibility can begin at an early age. Nancy Condee asked Tolya, a nine-year-old Russian boy, "What kinds of solutions should be sought to reduce tensions between our two countries?" The boy replied: "I would tell Reagan that the thing he's building in space is going to cause war. I'd tell him 'Build it slowly! Take your time! Don't rush!' If he could spend a million years building it, we would have a million years of peace. And only afterwards, as soon as it was already built, then we would have war".


References

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2. White T. Quoted in Kaplan F. The wizards of armageddon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

3. Zur O. The psychohistory of warfare: the co-evolution of culture, psyche and enemy. J Peace Res 1987; 24: 125-34.

4. Kelman H. On the sources of attachment to the nation. Presented at panel on patriotism: Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, San Francisco, 1987, July 4-7.

5. Seville Statement, Interciencia, 1987; 12: 53-54.

6. Bunting III. Looking for truths from an old enemy. Review of brothers in arms: a journey from war to peace by William Broyles Jr. New York: Knopf, 1986. The Boston Sunday Globe 19863 May 25: B11-B12.

7. Mack JE. Foreword in: Cyprus-war and adaptation: a psychoanalytic history of two ethnic groups in conflict. Volkan Vamik E, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1979: ix-xxi.

8. Harevan A. Notes and transcript of a conference on psychological impediments to international negotiations, Watergate Hotel, Washington, DC. January 20-26, 1980.

9. Broyles W Jr. Why me?-why them? The New York Times 1986, May 26: 19.

10. Volkan VD. The need to have enemies and allies: a developmental approach. Political Psychol 1985; 6: 219-47.

11. Freud S. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Complete psychological works. Vol 18. London: Hogarth, 1955: 67-143.

12. Keen S. Faces of the enemy. Public Broadcasting Service. 1987; May 27.

13. Cohen SF. America's Russia. Princeton Alumni Weekly 1986; September 30:11-13.

14. Mack JE, National security reconsidered: new perspectives generated by the prospect of a nuclear winter. In: Grinspoon L, ed. The long darkness: psychological and moral perspectives on nuclear winter. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986: 103-40.

15. Shulman MD. Man bites dogma. New York: Columbia, 1981: 17-20.

16. Mandelstam N. Hope against hope: a memoir. New York: Atheneum, 1983.

17. Mack JE. Nationalism and the self. The Psychohistory Review 1983; 11: 47-69.

18. Stem DN. The interpersonal world of the infant: a view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

19. Pinderhughes CA. Differential bonding from infancy to international conflict. Psychoanalyt Inquiry 1986; 6: 155-73.

20. Hesse P. Stereotypes mask feelings of fear. Media and Values. 1987; 39 (May): 5-6.

21. Carlsson-Paige N, Levin D. The war play dilemma; balancing needs and values in the early childhood classroom. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1987.

22. Mack JE. The challenge of political self-responsibility in the nuclear age. J Humanistic Psychol (in press).

23. Hoffman S. On the political psychology of peace and war: a critique and an agenda. Political Psychol 1986; 7: 1-2 1.


John E. Mack, M.D., is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Mack is the founder of the Center for Psychology & Social Change. He is the author or co-author of ten books, including A Prince of Our Disorder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and most recently, Passport to the Cosmos.

© 1988 John E. Mack, M.D.

Originally published in The Lancet August 13, 1988, pp. 385-387

A longer version of The Enemy System was published in Volkan, Vamik D., Demetrios A. Julius, and Joseph V. Montville, eds. The Psychodynamics of International Relationships. Volume I. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990, pp. 57-67