What can possibly explain the transformation that sometimes happens from non-violent civilian to combatant to criminal? Pulitzer Prize winning author and CISAC
affiliate Richard Rhodes tackled this bedeviling question head-on in a recent
lecture for Stanford's Ethics & War series, co-sponsored by the Center for
International Security and Cooperation. Drawing heavily upon the work of Lonnie
H. Athens, a Seton Hall University criminology professor, about whom Rhodes
wrote a 1999 book entitled Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick
Criminologist, Rhodes argued that all
violent criminals go through a process that Athens called
"violentization." The first stage, "brutalization,"
consists of witnessing abusive or violent behavior, often at a young age, and
receiving encouragement to act in a similar way to resolve disputes. In the
second stage, "belligerency," the individual takes stock of what has
happened, examines his or her situation, and decides to begin to move to the
third stage: using serious violence, if provoked, as a means of protection.
In Rhodes' view, this process is
essentially identical to the training a military recruit undergoes. Both, he
says, go through a period of re-socialization during which even lethal violence
become acceptable, expected, and rewarded. Military recruits are
"deliberately and systematically rebuked, scorned and punished for
civilian behavior and coached and
rewarded for military behavior including the controlled use of violence,"
he observes. "Violent domination, personal horrification and violent
coaching are fundamental to basic military training." There is, however, a fundamental difference. The violent
criminal moves on to a fourth stage, "virulence," in which the
individual becomes willing to commit serious violence without provocation and
embraces the sense of confidence and power created by the successful completion
of these acts. The soldier, by contrast, is constrained within the third stage
of violentization by the rule of law, by ethics, by codes of honor, and
"implicitly," says Rhodes, "support from military leaders up the
chain of command," who "are expected to limit their demands of
violent action to appropriately defensive campaigns."
Within these
constraints, the limitations of violence are clear. Self-defense is
justifiable, and by extension so is the killing of an enemy combatant. Even the
strategic bombing during World War II (and presumably more recently) can be
justified with such arguments, Rhodes argues, "although that logic grew
increasingly thin as the bombing expanded from military targets to military
industrial targets and finally to the homes and neighborhoods of enemy
civilians."
What, then, to make of My Lai, in which American soldiers
killed babies and children, the Einsatzgruppen, who shot hundreds of thousands
of innocent Jews with horrific efficiency, or the heinous war crimes committed in
conflicts around the world? In these cases, the perpetrators have found
themselves moving into virulence. The constraints that circumscribed their
violent actions have broken down. Authorities in the chain of command either
overlooked or ignored the need to enforce the limitations required to prevent
criminal violence. In the eyes of the perpetrators, and in some cases those
making the direct orders, the enemy became an omnipotent and ubiquitous
presence, and the power that came with committing lethal violence was
overwhelming. The line between self-defense and murder became so attenuated
that it was essentially meaningless. Virtually the only possible outcome: unrestrained
lethal violence.
Rhodes argues that the need to understand this dynamic has
become increasingly urgent. The nuclear deterrent has largely foreclosed the
prospect of conventional war, and "modern combat has strained the
traditional limitations of violence on war to the breaking point and
beyond." Modern weapons make it possible to do more lethal violence than
the old days of single-shot rifles and hand grenades, he says, and the line between combatants and civilians can become difficult to define.
The quandary now is how to ensure that the process of
violentization among members of the military does not extend to the fourth
category. Even Heinrich Himmler, commander of the Einsatzgruppen, understood
this on some level. He was horrified, Rhodes says, that members of his elite
fighting squad had become such enthusiastic killers that they would take it
upon themselves to find and shoot Jews. Others, in other wartime situations,
unable to deal with the consequences of their actions as they meandered toward
that fourth stage, killed themselves, suffered serious psychological problems,
or committed acts of violence back at home. Now we are seeing similar consequences
among the men and women who are forced to draw distinctions every day between
civilian and enemy combatants. Indeed, he says, only the ethical and legal
limitations put on soldiers, and enforced by their superiors in the chain of command, can protect them from becoming malevolently violent.
Failing to maintain these restrictions has dire consequences. As Rhodes and
many others before him have said, "as we sow, so shall we reap."
